- CONUA, AFED say outcome a wake-up call to address decay in education system
By Gabriel Dike
Stakeholders have described the poor performance of candidates in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) as unacceptable and a sign that all is not well with the nation’s education system.
The analysis of the 2025 UTME released on Monday sent a shockwave around the country, with stakeholders and parents asking what went wrong.
In its reaction, the Congress of University Academics (CONUA) described the 2025 UTME results as a wake-up call on the state of Nigeria’s education system.
The President of CONUA, Dr. Niyi Sunmonu said the union “views with deep concern, the released summary of the 2025 UTME results by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
He said: “The data presents to all of us, a sobering reflection of the state of our nation’s basic and secondary education system.”
Sunmonu said the performance index reveals a deep-rooted crisis in our educational system, noting that the limited number of high performers and the overwhelming concentration of candidates in the lower score brackets indicate widespread issues in several deliverables such as curriculum delivery, learning environment, teacher quality, equitable access to quality education, mastery of CBT procedures by students.
According to him, some of the dire implications are that the universities will face pressure to maintain standards amidst limited qualifying candidates, students from underserved regions (with fewer educational resources or support systems) are disproportionately disadvantaged and the nation risks further weakening its human capital base.
CONUA suggested a review of the current curriculum to ensure it aligns with practical, 21st-century needs, invest in teacher training, monitoring, and accountability, bridge educational inequality by improving school infrastructure and access to learning resources nationwide.
It urged government and stakeholders to support remedial education programmes (such as pre-degrees, JUPEB, etc) at the tertiary level to cater for underprepared but promising students.
President, Association of Formidable Educational Development (AFED), Emmanuel Oji, also described the performance as abysmal and linked it to the symptoms affecting the education system.
He added: “This results kills the moral of those of us who believe that working hard for a better education outcome is not doing the right thing. It demoralises to say the least.”
On the way forward, he commended the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa for taking some practical steps that appear would yield results to address some of the rots in the system.
“When anyone wants to solve a problem, the best approach would be to bring in stakeholders, like he did today, first to take the appraisal of the situation, make a clear problem statement, draw a clear objective analysis, and create a rational, holistic approach,” he argued.
Oji suggested the need to rethink our education system, insisting, “Everything world over is taking a break from conventional structure. We need to have a rethink on the new approach that can best suit their learning capabilities after all it will be us that are wrong and not them for insisting on educating them in our own way.”