By Chinedu Agu
Dear Professor Nnenna Oti.
Yesterday, Tuesday, 10 March 2026, images and videos emerged from the premises of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, that should trouble the conscience of any institution that prides itself as a citadel of learning.
They showed thousands of young students of your esteemed university pressed against each other, bodies packed tightly in an anxious struggle to gain access to a hall for a Computer-Based Test (CBT) examination.
These were young men and women who had come to write an examination required by their university.
Reports indicate that about 5,000 first-year students were scheduled to take the CBT examination in a single hall, forcing thousands to struggle for space in a chaotic scene that bore a disturbing resemblance to a stampede waiting to happen.
As the crowd surged and bodies compressed against one another, five students reportedly fainted and had to be evacuated by ambulance to the university clinic. Yet the examination exercise reportedly continued.
Prof., this raises a fundamental question that must be asked with clarity and urgency:
Why should students have to pass through such a torturous and dangerous process merely to write an examination?
Universities exist to cultivate intellect, not to subject students to physical endurance trials. An examination hall is supposed to be a place of academic assessment, not a theatre of anxiety, disorder, and potential tragedy.
What happened at FUTO yesterday was not merely an administrative oversight. It was a failure of planning, organisation, and duty of care owed to the students entrusted to the university.
It is difficult to understand how five thousand students could be scheduled for a CBT examination in a single venue without regard to the capacity of the hall. Computer Based Testing, by its very nature, is designed to allow multiple batches of candidates to write examinations in scheduled time slots.
This approach is already widely used in national examinations such as JAMB, professional certification tests, and other academic assessments.
Why then would a university organise a CBT exercise in a manner that forces thousands of students to physically jostle for access to a single hall?
Why was the examination not properly scheduled in multiple batches matching the seating capacity of the hall?
Why were the students not assigned specific time slots and reporting schedules to eliminate overcrowding?
Why was basic crowd control and safety planning not implemented?
These are not difficult administrative questions. They are elementary considerations in organising any event involving large numbers of people.
Sadly, what happened at FUTO yesterday is not an isolated incident. It is symptomatic of a deeper culture of institutional disorganisation that has become almost normalised within many of our public institutions.
For many Nigerians who passed through the university system, the images from FUTO yesterday evoke painful familiarity. Many of us remember that in our university years, almost every administrative procedure was a struggle.
Buying and submitting JAMB forms was chaotic. Taking JAMB examinations often involved confusion and uncertainty. Writing university aptitude tests frequently required navigating poorly organised venues. Checking aptitude test results at university campuses meant pushing through crowds around notice boards.
Checking the admission list itself could be an ordeal. Processing admission clearance at the Admissions Office and the Bursary was often a test of patience, endurance, and survival. Even something as simple as checking academic results meant crowding around notice boards like spectators at a football match. Then came GST courses and borrowed courses, where hundreds of students would be packed into halls far beyond their capacity.
In many universities, students stood through lectures, sat on window ledges, or crowded around doors because the halls could not accommodate them.
For many Nigerian students, the university experience was less about structured academic life and more about navigating institutional chaos.
These experiences may appear trivial when viewed individually. But collectively, they shape the habits and expectations of generations of graduates. When young people spend four or five years within systems defined by chaos, disorder, disorganisation, and constant improvisation, those patterns inevitably follow them into society. This is why part of the problem we face today is not merely about individual attitudes or personal discipline. It is systemic.
Our institutions have inadvertently trained citizens to operate within disorder.
When our universities, institutions that should model order, discipline, planning, and intellectual clarity, operate chaotically, we should not be surprised that the society they produce struggles with organisation. The average Nigerian’s apparent lack of decorum in public spaces [for instance, plying one-way, blaring of horns needlessly, jumping queue, beating traffic light, playing audio or video from personal devices without an earpiece in a public place] does not arise from cultural deficiency. It arises from systems that never taught order in the first place.
From the legal point of view [which I inevitably must refer to by my training], yesterday’s events at FUTO are therefore not merely an academic issue. They raise serious human rights concerns.
Under both regional legal frameworks and internationally recognised human rights principles, institutions have a duty of care to ensure that individuals under their supervision are not exposed to avoidable danger. Crowd situations involving thousands of people require careful planning because they carry inherent risks of stampede, suffocation, injury, and even death.
Nigeria has witnessed several tragic crowd-related incidents in the past, many of which occurred because authorities underestimated the dangers of unmanaged gatherings.
When thousands of students are compelled to force their way into a limited space simply to write an examination, the risk of such a tragedy becomes real.
Education must never become an environment where students risk their safety simply to access academic assessment.
The fainting of five students yesterday should not be treated as an unfortunate but insignificant event. It should be treated as a warning signal.
It is therefore important that this incident becomes an opportunity for institutional reflection and reform.
To prevent recurrence of such dangerous situations, the university should urgently consider the following measures:
First, examinations involving large numbers of students should be scheduled in multiple batches, with each batch matched to the actual seating capacity of the examination hall.
Second, students should be assigned specific time slots to eliminate unnecessary congregation at the venue.
Third, effective crowd management protocols should be implemented whenever large groups of students are expected.
Fourth, examination venues should be adequately supervised by trained personnel capable of maintaining order and ensuring student safety.
Fifth, where infrastructure limitations exist, the university should consider using multiple examination centres simultaneously rather than concentrating thousands of students in a single location.
Sixth, there should be clear communication to students regarding reporting times, venue capacity, and entry procedures to prevent panic and unnecessary rushing.
Universities should be environments where students learn not only academic knowledge but also the values of order, discipline, decorum, and institutional efficiency. When a university demonstrates organisation, its students internalise that culture. But when a university reflects chaos, the lessons learned are very different.
Mr. Vice Chancellor, the students who struggled through those crowds yesterday are not merely candidates for an examination. They are young Nigerians whose lives, rights and futures matter. They deserve dignity. They deserve safety. They deserve an educational environment that reflects the seriousness and prestige of the institution they attend.
I hope that the leadership of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, will take this matter seriously and ensure that future academic exercises are conducted in a manner consistent with the dignity, safety, and rights of the students entrusted to the university.
Universities must be centres of excellence not only in academic knowledge alone but also in institutional order and responsibility.
Yours sincerely,
_Chinedu Agu is an activist, lawyer, and writer and can be reached at onyeokaiwu@gmail.com or 08032568512._
