The month of May, 2025 will not be forgotten in a hurry in the history of education development in Nigeria. Within an interval of two weeks in the same month, the country witnessed some of the worst negative scenarios that can ever befall a nation with desire to be counted among the best in the world.
Within this period, two of the nation’s most relied upon agencies for the education of her citizens – the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB and the West African Examinations Council, WAEC proved themselves grossly over rated in their assigned duties. Established in 1962, WAEC offers and controls the final examinations necessary to earn appropriate secondary school certificates to qualified persons in given subject areas while JAMB organizes further examinations to further determine whom amongst those certified by WAEC are actually qualified for admissions into the nation’s tertiary institutions for higher education studies.
These points of education adventure, as represented by JAMB and WAEC, no doubts forms the yardstick for measuring the level of literacy and development capacity of a nation at given times. With the poor performance of these bodies recently, it has become clear that the country is yet to seriously begin to tackle her various challenges, using education as a tool. When the rot at that level combines with what presently obtains at the primary school education level which is often hidden from the press due to remoteness of schools’ locations, one cannot, but conclude that urgent state of emergency is required in the sector if Nigeria must make progress.
According to an ancient Greek philosopher and polymath, Aristotle (384 – 322 BC); “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” Aristotle’s assertion captures the greatest challenges facing the country as far as good governance is concerned – illiteracy.
Canada, with one of the most educated societies in the world is also one of the well-governed. She has about 99% adult literates and offers free and compulsory education to her citizens up to age 19. On the contrary, Nigeria has about 18.3 million out-of-school children population, representing the highest in the world.
For the sake of clarity, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board released the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME result on Friday, the 11th of May 2025.
The following day, news began to spread in both the social and main stream media with revelations that the results did not reflect the true outcome of the tests. In fairness to the Registrar of JAMB, Professor Ishak Oloyede, a powerful committee was set up almost immediately to investigate the cause of the poorly managed program. The result from the findings was embarrassingly disgusting.
The examining body admitted that there were technical glitches that resulted into poor records of students’ actual performance. Curiously, while examinations were hurriedly re-scheduled for those who scored low marks, high scorers were assumed to have been fairly ‘accessed’ by the same computers that caused discomfort to many candidates.
This is very unfair to scientific reasoning. Automated machines like computers are not humans that can selectively be involved in examination cheating. So, if the result was wrong for low performers, the same would have applied to the so-called high scorers.
In the case of WAEC, candidates who perhaps have never studied at night due to electricity power outages were compelled to write their English language examination at night on Wednesday, the 28th day of May with candle lights with worms in their stomachs making the kinds of noise that would have suggested to the examiners that it is difficult to undertake an academic exercise with pains of hunger and frustrations and still perform well, no matter how prepared candidates may have been. The reasons advanced so far for this awkward examination arrangement cannot be tenable in a well-structured society.
While Nigerians await the outcome of these examinations organized by WAEC, it is quite obvious that the aftermath may not differ much from the lame excuse that JAMB has offered the nation.
Meanwhile, the failure of JAMB and WAEC will logically manifest poorly in the performance of Nigerian youths pursuing post-secondary education. And this is a worrisome picture, given the fact that despite their high education standards, all the member states of G7 (Group of 7 most industrialized nations of the world) – UK, USA, Canada, Italy, Japan, France and Germany also offer free education to their citizens with ages not beyond 19.
If Nigeria must develop like other advanced nations of the world, the country’s education system must be fixed by the leaders and sectorial planners.
