A Broken Promise: How Nigeria’s Education System Fails Its Brightest Minds; UTME 2025

 

Deborah Ajayi didn’t cry when she saw her score. Her eyes locked on the digits — 187 out of 400 — and stayed there, unmoving. The 17-year-old had recently aced the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), particularly excelling in Mathematics and Physics. Her dream was to become an engineer. One test shouldn’t have derailed that ambition. But in today’s Nigeria, it did.

She is one among more than 1.9 million students who sat for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). Only 22.13% of them scored above 200 — the benchmark often used for university admissions. For the remaining 78%, the future was blurred with uncertainty, rejection, and shame.

These results are not just numbers. They are stories, many untold, of ambition thwarted by a system that is misaligned, inequitable, and outdated. They reflect not laziness, as some might assume, but a profound failure of the structures meant to support the pursuit of education in Nigeria.

The sharp disconnect between WASSCE and UTME syllabuses remains one of the most pressing issues. While WASSCE teaches students within a predictable framework — think definitions, formulae, and structured exercises — the UTME flips the table. Candidates are hit with logic puzzles, calculus-level reasoning, abstract Physics problems, and esoteric scenarios their classrooms never prepared them for.

This divergence is not merely an academic inconvenience. It is the root of widespread systemic failure. Students learn one curriculum and are assessed by another. Year after year, students like Deborah pay the price — not for ignorance, but for trusting a system that never intended to meet them halfway.

Every public school in the country echoes this disparity. Underfunded, overcrowded, and resource-starved, these institutions are expected to produce the same caliber of students as well-equipped private schools boasting modern labs, digital tools, and targeted exam coaching. The result is a tale of two Nigerias. One group is groomed for success. The other is left to navigate an academic labyrinth blindfolded.

Blaming students for low UTME scores is not just unfair — it is dishonest. Teachers themselves are often not trained in the more complex subjects that appear on JAMB’s examinations. Curricula are handed down without context, resources, or support. Instruction is reduced to rote memorization and survival tactics rather than critical engagement or skill-building. The system doesn’t teach; it penalizes those who haven’t somehow taught themselves.

Even on the day of the exam, the system continues to fail. JAMB schedules some exams as early as 6:30 a.m., a logistical nightmare for students in cities plagued by transportation chaos and security concerns. Many arrive mentally and physically exhausted before the test even begins. This is not how potential should be measured.

And yet, there are calls in some quarters to lower the UTME cut-off mark in response to the dismal pass rate. That argument, while tempting on the surface, is a dangerous trap. Reducing the standard does nothing to resolve the root causes of underperformance. Instead, it masks the deficiencies in the system and perpetuates the cycle of mediocrity. The issue isn’t that the bar is too high. It’s that the ladder has been removed entirely.

Over 430,000 students passed — enough to fill university seats, some say. But this logic is both short-sighted and unjust. It reduces education to a numbers game, disregarding the millions who are discarded each year without a second thought. These are not just failed candidates; they are abandoned citizens. Their dreams are no less worthy simply because the system didn’t work for them.

Calls for reform have grown louder, but change has been painfully slow. The solution is neither radical nor impossible: harmonize the WASSCE and JAMB curricula. Bridge the content gap so that what is taught reflects what is tested. Equip teachers with real training and access to modern instructional tools. Restore the integrity of classrooms by upgrading infrastructure and creating environments where learning is more than survival.

This crisis is not about one bad exam year. It’s about a national pattern of neglect and indifference. Until education reform becomes more than just a campaign soundbite, Nigeria will continue losing not just students, but entire generations of potential scientists, engineers, writers, and leaders.

Deborah’s silence is not just a personal reaction — it is a national alarm. A quiet rebellion against an educational system that promised her wings but clipped them before she could fly.

If Nigeria is serious about its future, then it must treat education with the urgency it deserves. Not as an elite privilege, but as a national imperative. Until then, the question isn’t how many passed the UTME. The real question is: how many more must be failed before we act?