UTME Mass failure: Stakeholders, JAMB trade blames

With a poor record of 14 per cent pass and 86 per cent failure at the just-concluded 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), divergent impressions have been expressed by stakeholders as to what steered to the impoverished performance by the candidates.

While some said it was a review of the state of education in the country, some blamed numerous circumstances for the situation.

The development elicited different responses when the question, Concerned Educators and Parents, how do you feel about the released 2021 UTME results of your wards? Is this year’s UTME a true reflection of the Nigerian education system? was posted on an online education platform, Concerned Parents & Educators, CPE.

For Olushola Agbalu, parents should not feel bad over the mass failure of students in the just- concluded UTME.

His words: ”I believe this is the first time in so many years that JAMB conducted examination and gave a true and fair view of the academic performance of the students.

Let us not discourage the examination body, but instead, I appeal to all schools to give quality teaching, commensurate with the fees being paid by parents and going forward, let the school examination result be the true performance of the students. Any student who fails should be allowed to repeat the class instead of pushing them to the next class in order to prevent their withdrawal from the school by the parents.” 

Collaborating Agbalu’s view, another stakeholder, Babajide Ajayi, explained that the focus of the youths on social media rather than on their studies, was the reason for the mass failure in this year’s UTME.

“The truth of the matter is that students in Nigeria do not prepare and study appropriately for exams again but exhibit outright laziness and are only interested in carrying around iPhones, iPad and some other expensive phones.

“They occupy their time and mind with streaming of irrelevant stories on social media. Social media has ruined the lives of many students in Nigeria,” he said.

JAMB is liable for the failure

“JAMB is responsible for students’ mass failure,” was the lamentation of a mother, whose three children wrote this year’s UTME despite scoring above 200. She believes they would have done better if there were no irregularities.

According to Mrs Gbemisola Abodurin: “I have three daughters that wrote UTME last year with the following scores: 293, 262 and 224. None of them was given admission to study their desired courses. They sat for another exam this year only to score 263, 206 and 224 respectively despite their rigorous studying, and the three of them sat for it at different centres.

“Why the drastic reduction if not wickedness from JAMB? They felt bad but I had to encourage them.” 

For a tutorial centre owner, Bolaji Kayode, the results were not encouraging.

Her words: “I have a tutorial centre, I have never seen terrible results like this before.

“80% of my students always scored 200 and above. This year, I have counted 200 and above, not up to 30 students, just one scored 318, about 10 of them scored above 250.

“Sincerely, something is wrong somewhere. I’m not happy at all. I believe in my students and they were well trained.” 

System and network disappointments

Expressing dismay over the poor performance of her sister in 2021 UTME, Suliamon Saheedat said: “I feel so sad with this year’s UTME. My sister’s computer went off before she could even finish attempting the questions and she has been scored 178.

“This is after they were told they will receive message for make-up exams only to be told last weekend that the exams were only meant for people who couldn’t use the system from beginning due to error and not the people whose system went off in the process of writing the exams.

For Abdullahi Abdulateef: “Truly, some things don’t just add up and also, there are some germane issues which need to be looked into and bring about justice for the candidates concerned.

“For instance, one of my students couldn’t write the exam at the University of Ilorin, CBT centre just because the centre provided 230 computer systems instead of 250 for the particular batch.