Peter Obi, the 2023 presidential candidate for the Labour Celebration has reacted to studies on the kidnapping of 14 candidates for the 2026 Joint Admissions and Matriculation (JAMB) examination in Benue State.
Obi described the incident as “simply heartbreaking however a damning indictment of the failure of management and the collapse of safety in our nation.”
Recall that POLITICS NIGERIA had reported that candidates travelling for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), a standardised computer-based take a look at in Nigeria carried out yearly by JAMB had been kidnapped by some gunmen alongside the Makurdi-Otukpo Highway late Wednesday.
Sources stated the scholars had been heading to the venue of their examinations which was scheduled to happen on Thursday, April 16.
Whereas the Police within the state had said that there’s a risk that the scholars on board the state-owned Benue Hyperlinks had travelled exterior an permitted time, Obi stated it’s unlucky that younger Nigerians striving for an schooling are being met with terror.
He additionally warned that the nation can’t proceed to function in such a way the place these saddled with the accountability of defending are solely preoccupied with the approaching elections.
His phrases, “In a rustic the place the share of tertiary graduates is already painfully low (about 1%) which is much under friends like Indonesia (about 13%) and South Africa (round 10%). That is unacceptable. We can’t afford to lose even yet one more pupil to violence.
“These entrusted with defending these younger college students seem more and more preoccupied with the subsequent election, projecting energy and energy to rig elections, moderately than deploying that very same energy and companies to safe our roads, stop these crimes, and rescue the kidnapped youngsters who shouldn’t be within the palms of criminals however in examination halls.
“That is now not an remoted tragedy. It’s a sample. It’s a nationwide disaster. And it calls for pressing, decisive, and accountable motion, not excuses, not silence, however management that matches the dimensions of the emergency this deserves.
“A nation that abandons its youth abandons its future. This can’t proceed,” Obi wrote on X.