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2024 UTME: Addressing Mass Failure – Peter Obi The former Governor emphasized that Nigeria’s education sector lags behind countries like Iran, Bangladesh, and Egypt. The distribution of scores in the UTME results is cause for alarm: only 0.5% of candidates scored 300 (75%) and above, while a staggering 76% scored below 200 (below 50%). |
Peter Obi, the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 general election, has expressed concern over the significant failure rate recorded in the 2024 Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) UTME examination. In a recent post on his official X account, Obi highlighted the alarming statistics that demand urgent national attention.
The former Governor emphasized that Nigeria’s education sector lags behind countries like Iran, Bangladesh, and Egypt. The distribution of scores in the UTME results is cause for alarm: only 0.5% of candidates scored 300 (75%) and above, while a staggering 76% scored below 200 (below 50%).
This disparity underscores a clear gap in the quality of education provided nationwide. Education plays a crucial role in a nation’s progress on the Human Development Index (HDI). Unfortunately, Nigeria’s HDI ranking remains low at 164 out of 191 countries measured, placing it far below other comparable nations with medium and high HDI, such as Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.
Despite claiming a literacy rate above 50%, Nigeria falls short of the global average of approximately 80%. Other countries like Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and the Philippines have literacy rates exceeding 70%. This highlights the systemic challenges in providing quality education, especially in rural areas.
Obi pointed out a significant consequence of the poor performance in the UTME: Nigeria, with a population of over 200 million, can only boast about 2 million full-time university students. In contrast, Iran, with a population of over 89 million, has over 8.2 million students in a single university (Islamic Azad University), and Bangladesh, with a population of about 173 million, enrolls over 2 million undergraduates in the National University of Bangladesh.
