South-East Senate Caucus Demands Answers Over UTME Glitches, Warns Against Recurrence

The South-East Senate Caucus has raised serious concerns over the technical disruptions that marred the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) across several centres in the South-East and Lagos State, describing the incident as “curious and highly suspicious.”

In a statement issued on Saturday, Chairman of the Caucus, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, warned that a recurrence of such a disruption would be unacceptable, stressing that the incident risks eroding public confidence in Nigeria’s education system and undermining national unity.

While acknowledging the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board’s (JAMB) efforts to reschedule affected examinations and the public apology offered by its Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, Abaribe said mere regret is not enough to address what he called a potentially deeper problem.

“The so-called glitch, as curious and suspicious as it were, is enough to erode confidence and dangerously lower national pride among the future generation,” Abaribe stated.

He added that the fact that the disruptions occurred predominantly in the South-East raises “pertinent questions” that JAMB must urgently address to calm growing concerns and frustrations, particularly among students and parents in the region.

“That the glitch happened in the whole of South-East 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,” he said.

Abaribe warned against allowing political bias or ethnic considerations to influence educational policies and implementation, noting that such tendencies are dangerous and capable of fracturing national cohesion.

“The relevant national education drivers must recognise the inherent danger of injecting hateful politics and narrow parochial considerations in both policy enunciation and its implementation,” he said.

The senator emphasized that education is a fundamental pillar of national development and must be treated with utmost seriousness and fairness.

“Education remains one of the most important bedrocks of any society’s advancement. Every child is entitled to it, and we must not play roulette with it,” Abaribe said. “It is a major pivot for national development.”

He concluded by saying the South-East Senate Caucus is closely monitoring the situation, under pressure from constituents, and demands concrete assurances from JAMB and other relevant agencies that such failures will not reoccur.

“We must pursue a Nigerian agenda and not a narrow one that will ultimately injure national unity,” Abaribe added.