The South-East Senate Caucus has expressed deep concerns over the technical glitches that disrupted the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in several centres across the region and Lagos State, calling the situation “curious and highly suspicious.”
In a statement released on Saturday by the Chairman of the caucus, Enyinnaya Abaribe, emphasised that such disruptions were unacceptable and must not occur again.
While acknowledging the efforts of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to address the issue, including rescheduling the affected examinations, Abaribe stressed the need for stronger assurances to prevent future occurrences.
“The so-called glitch, as curious and suspicious as it was, is enough to erode confidence and dangerously lower national pride among the future generation,” Abaribe said.
The caucus warned that the recurring technical issues could lead to a loss of trust in the examination process, especially in the affected regions.
“The relevant national education drivers must recognise the inherent danger of injecting hateful politics and narrow parochial consideration in both policy enunciation and its implementations,” he added.
He highlighted that every Nigerian child is entitled to education and stressed that the system should not be compromised.
“Education is a major pivot that triggers national development. Every child is entitled to it, therefore we must not play roulette with it,” Abaribe added.
The South-East Senate Caucus is under pressure from its constituents to ensure that such a “scandalous glitch” does not happen again. Abaribe concluded by urging JAMB and other relevant authorities to provide firm assurance that this issue will be resolved and that future exams will be conducted without disruption.
The controversy surrounding the 2025 UTME deepened after the results were released on May 9. A review of the results showed that more than 78 per cent of candidates scored less than 200 points out of the maximum 400. This sparked widespread protests and questions about the integrity of the examination process.
On Wednesday, Ishaq Oloyede, the JAMB registrar, admitted that technical mistakes made by one of JAMB’s service providers led to incorrect results for nearly 380,000 candidates in 157 centres across Lagos and the South-East states.
