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By Myke Agunwa
Following the technical glitches experienced during the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) that affected all the states in the Southeast and some parts of Lagos State, Southeast Senate caucus has stated that the situation is ‘curious and highly suspicious.’
The lawmakers said that they would not want to contemplate that the glitches may have been deliberately configured to affect children from the zone.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) had admitted that technical glitches affected 157 centres out of its 887 centres, causing mass failure in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in some parts of Lagos State and all the centers in the Southeast.
During a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday, JAMB Registrar Ishaq Oloyede said that those in charge of the exams were “humans” and “not perfect”. He said the affected candidates would retake the examination.
But in a statement on Saturday in Abuja, Chairman of the caucus, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, representing Abia South, described the impact of the glitches on the region as disheartening and hoped not to contemplate a conspiracy theory that there is a narrow agenda being pursued to deliberately shortchange and harm the future of children from the southeast.
“That the glitch happened in the whole of the Southeast raises pertinent questions that must be answered by JAMB to assuage the growing frustrations and fears among the people of the region, particularly the children who are directly at the receiving end. We must pursue a Nigerian agenda and not a narrow one that will ultimately injure national unity,” Abaribe stated.
Despite efforts being made by the examination body to allow the affected states to retake the examination, the caucus warned that a future reoccurrence will be unacceptable.
The caucus welcomed the timely acceptance of fault and tearful apology by the JAMB management, particularly its Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, but reminded the body that such a glitch was enough to reduce the confidence of the zone in the examination body.
“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.
“The relevant national education drivers must recognise the inherent danger of injecting hateful politics and narrow parochial considerations into both policy enunciation and its implementation,” he warned.
Abaribe maintained that despite the display of penitence, concrete steps must be taken to prevent future glitches that will disrupt the educational advancement of children of the South-East region.
“Education remains one of the most important bedrocks of any society’s advancement. It is one major index of development in every facet of life that can never be faulted. Education is a major pivot that triggers national development. Every child is entitled to it; therefore, we must not play roulette with it,” he said.
The South-East Senate Caucus demanded reassurance from JAMB and other relevant national educational policy drivers that there will never be a recurrence of such a scandalous glitch in the future.