The 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has condemned the abduction of candidates sitting for the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), along the Makurdi-Otukpo road in Benue State.
Obi described the incident as evidence of worsening security failures in Nigeria, noting that Nigeria cannot afford to lose a single student.
ThelensNG reports that the UTME candidates and other passengers were abducted by gunmen in a bus that was travelling from Makurdi to Otukpo on Wednesday night.
Reacting to the development on Friday, Obi described the incident as unacceptable, “The news of the abduction of innocent UTME candidates in Benue State is not just heartbreaking but a damning indictment of the failure of leadership and the collapse of security in our nation.
“Young Nigerians striving for an education are being met with terror. In a country where the share of tertiary graduates is already painfully low (about 1%) which is far below peers like Indonesia (about 13%) and South Africa (around 10%). This is unacceptable. We cannot afford to lose even one more student to violence,” he said.
Obi alleged that those entrusted with protecting these young students appear to be increasingly preoccupied with the next election, projecting strength and power to rig elections, rather than deploying that same power and agencies to secure roads, prevent these crimes, and rescue the abducted children who should not be in the hands of criminals but in examination halls.
He asserted that insecurity in Nigeria is no longer an isolated tragedy but a pattern and a national crisis.
“And it demands urgent, decisive, and responsible action, not excuses, not silence, but leadership that matches the scale of the emergency this deserves,” Obi stated.
He further argued that a nation that abandons its youth abandons its future, adding that this cannot continue.
