Why Sending Children Hundreds of Kilometres to Write a 2-Hour Exam Is a Policy That Needs Urgent Review – By Kabiru Haruna AD press
In recent years, a disturbing pattern has crept into our education system, and it is happening quietly at the expense of the poor.
Every UTME season, thousands of Nigerian children are posted to write the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) exam at centres hundreds of kilometres from their homes.
A child living in Kano metropolis wakes up to find he has been posted to Zamfara. Another in Nassarawa, Kano is sent to Doguwa or Tudun Wada. For an examination that lasts less than four hours, families are forced to embark on journeys that cost money they do not have, through roads that are no longer safe, into towns they have never seen.
The fees may seem reasonable on paper. The location is not. And when location is indifferent to reality, education becomes a gamble. This practice of random posting and distant relocation of exam centres has become the “gunning point” — the breaking point — for many families. We must ask: what are we really testing? The student’s knowledge, or the parent’s capacity to survive Nigeria?
Nigeria’s economic stimulus is, to put it mildly, on the verge of untold hardship. Transport fare from Kano to Gusau in Zamfara can swallow a month’s minimum wage. Add lodging for the night before, because no responsible parent will risk a dawn trip on dangerous highways. Add feeding, return fare, and the hidden cost of a parent abandoning work to accompany a minor.
For a family earning N50,000 a month, JAMB posting alone can consume N40,000. That is before the form is even bought. The result is predictable: many students prefer not to go. They resign their fate. They weep, not as children, but as young adults whose country has priced them out of opportunity. When we post a child from Kano metropolis to Doguwa, Tudun Wada, or across state lines, we are not expanding access. We are creating a financial filter that has nothing to do with merit.
Security has, in many corridors of this country, given way to danger. Parents read daily of kidnapping on highways, banditry in rural districts, and general lawlessness on interstate roads. To then receive a JAMB slip posting a 16-year-old girl to a remote centre in another state, with reporting time of 6:30 a.m., is to ask parents to choose between education and safety.
No exam is worth a child’s life. No policy should force that choice. Yet that is what random distant posting does. It outsources risk to the poorest families — the ones who cannot afford private drivers, who cannot hire escorts, who must join public transport at 4 a.m. and pray. We cannot claim to be building human capital while routing our children through known security flashpoints for a 2-hour test.
Exams are not just about what you know; they are about the condition in which you write them. A student who travels 7 hours the day before, sleeps in an unfamiliar, overcrowded motel or on a chair in a stranger’s parlour, and wakes at 5 a.m. anxious and underfed, is not on equal footing with a student who walked 10 minutes to his centre.
UTME is a computer-based test that demands focus, speed, and calm. Fatigue, travel stress, and anxiety are proven depressants of cognitive performance. By posting candidates far away, JAMB is inadvertently introducing a variable that distorts scores. We are no longer measuring aptitude alone; we are measuring endurance, money, and luck. That is not standardised testing. That is structural bias.
Kano metropolis alone has dozens of accredited CBT centres. So do Kaduna, Lagos, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, and Enugu. Yet candidates resident in these cities are routinely posted to outskirts and neighbouring states. Parents ask a simple question: why?
If the argument is malpractice, then the solution is better surveillance, more officials, and biometric integrity — not geographic punishment. Distance does not cure cheating; it merely exports it and adds hardship. If the argument is centre capacity, then JAMB should publish the data: how many candidates, how many local seats, what is the deficit. Transparency will help parents understand. Silence breeds suspicion that the posting algorithm is random, not rational.
“Instead they resigned their fate, as weep not child.” That line captures what is happening in thousands of homes. A child spends months preparing, only to be told to travel to a place his parents consider unsafe or unaffordable. The message he receives is brutal: your country cannot organise a fair chance for you.
We are raising a generation that learns early that the system is indifferent. That lesson lasts longer than any exam. It kills aspiration. It teaches that effort does not equal opportunity. For the girl-child, the effect is worse. Many conservative families will simply say “no” to a trip from Kano to Zamfara. One posting decision ends her academic journey.
This is not an attack on JAMB. The Board has digitised testing, reduced mass leakage, and improved release times. Those are commendable. But a good system must also be humane. We therefore call on JAMB stakeholders, the Federal Ministry of Education, and all “education ingredients” — state governments, PTAs, NAPPS, and civil society — to urgently review the posting policy. Here are practical steps:
1. 50km Radius Rule: No candidate should be posted to a centre more than 50km from his LGA of residence, except where he expressly opts in. Nigeria is too insecure and too poor for forced long-distance travel by minors.
2. Publish Centre Audit: Before registration, JAMB should publish accredited centres per state and LGA with seat capacity. Candidates can then choose within their cluster. Transparency kills rumour.
3. Prioritise Minors and Females: Candidates under 18 and all female candidates must be given automatic nearest-centre priority. Safety is not negotiable.
4. Emergency Re-posting Window: Open a 72-hour window after slip printing for candidates to request re-posting on grounds of distance >50km or verifiable insecurity. Let local JAMB offices handle it.
5. State Partnerships: State governments that want their children educated should fund and accredit more CBT centres. If Kano has 2 million candidates but only 40,000 local seats, that is a state problem too. JAMB and states must collaborate, not trade blame.
6. Transport Stipend Pilot: If distant posting is truly unavoidable in rare cases, JAMB should pilot a transport and lodging stipend for candidates posted beyond 100km. If we can pay officials DTA, we can protect children.
The UTME is a gateway exam. It should open doors, not close them. Posting a child from Kano metropolis to Doguwa is a milestone — but of the wrong kind. Posting a child from Kano to Zamfara for a 2-hour exam, in this economy and this security climate, is a policy that has lost empathy.
We appeal, not attack. We ask JAMB to reconsider. Let us not test poverty. Let us not test parental courage. Let us test knowledge. Let us keep our children close, safe, and focused, so that the only thing they fight in the exam hall is the question paper — not distance, not danger, not despair.
Our children are not random data points to be scattered across a map. They are the reason the map exists. Let us post them with care, or we will lose them to fate, and Nigeria will weep, not child.