Former students of the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI) study centres across Ekiti State, on Monday, staged a protest, disrupting the ongoing NCE and B.Ed. examinations conducted at various centres in the state.
At the Federal Government College, Ikole-Ekiti, protesters blocked the main entrance to the school, preventing candidates, staff, and other authorised persons from gaining access to the examination venue for several hours.
The demonstrators, who are graduates of the NTI programme, chanted solidarity songs and displayed placards bearing inscriptions such as ‘No Certificate, No Exam’, expressing their frustration over the prolonged delay in the issuance of their certificates and statements of results.
The Nigerian Tribune gathered that many of the affected graduates completed their programmes more than six years ago, but are yet to receive their certificates or official statements of results.
The delay, they said, had negatively affected their career progression, as many of them are serving teachers who require these credentials for promotion by the Ekiti State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) and the Ekiti State Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM).
The protesters called on the management of the National Teachers’ Institute to urgently address the situation by releasing the outstanding certificates and results to all qualified graduates.
Efforts to obtain the reaction of the NTI were unsuccessful, as calls placed to the official telephone number, 09166504342, were not answered as of the time of filing this report.