The Federal Ministry of Education has said it would enforce national character for admission of students into Federal Unity Colleges.
The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu represented by the Permanent Secretary, Mr Sonny Echono , made this known during a monitoring visit to some entrance examination centres in Abuja on Saturday.
Adamu said students would now be made to make choices from each geo-political zones, saying the idea was to encourage students to have opportunities to choose any region of their choice.
The minister noted that government had planned to increase the carrying capacity of the Unity Schools to 30,000 to accommodate new stream of schools and more candidates who were desirous of attending the colleges.
He noted that the carrying was increased to about 26,000 in 2020 which did not include the six new Technical Colleges.
He added that plans were also underway to establish five more colleges in the country to bring the total number of Unity Colleges to 115.
Adamu said: “We know that there are security challenges across the Federation but we are working assiduously to address that.
“Government has been kind to the sector and the National Assembly has continued to appropriate funds for us to provide security infrastructure in our schools.
“So, the Federal schools are actually more secured than most others. On the strength of that, we want parents to allow their children enrol for the schools; let them know this country and meet other people,” he said.
According to him, the examination is taking place at a very difficult time the chief examiner is not here with us, but as people of faith, we say all is well and we are trusting God to comfort the family and the rest of us in the Education family for the loss of the Registrar of NECO, Prof. Godswill Obioma.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) correspondent, who visited a centre at the School for the Gifted in Gwagwalada, noticed that students across schools in Gwagwalada participated in the examination.
Some of the schools present were Kidsville Higher Academy, Little Gem Montessori Model School and Fortress integrated Model School among others.
The examination centre was observed to be peaceful and there were no cases of examination malpractice due to the good conduct of students.
Speaking with some of the students after the examination, Patrick Ogunyemi, a pupil of Little Gem Montessori Model School said that the examination was easy for him as he did not face any difficulty in the hall.
Also, another student, Jubril Sesani, said that the examination was not difficult.
However, Mary Chukwudi said the examination was a little difficult for her, but glad that she had written the examination.
Similarly, Nuhu Ibrahim said he faced a little difficulty in answering some questions because they were quite hard for him.
Also, at the Government Secondary School (GSS) Lugbe, the entrance examination started at about 9:50a.m. with the arrival of materials.
In Lugbe, most parents found it difficult to located their children’s examination centers due to similarities in names of the schools.
This made most pupils arrived late for their examination and there were also issues of sit numbers among pupils who went to the wrong centers.
NAN also reports that the students observed all COVID-19 protocols by wearing of nosemasks, washing of hands and observing sitting arrangements. (NAN)
