South-east Rep member wants 2025 UTME cancelled

Hon. Iduma Igariwey, the South-East Caucus in the House of Representatives, has called for an outright cancellation of the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB.

The lawmaker, while speaking on Channels Television, described the last examination as a “catastrophic institutional failure” which brought the integrity and fairness of the process into question.

He said taking responsibility for the  error by the management of JAMB was ot enough, insisting that the integrity of the entire examination process had been compromised.

“The whole thing has lost its integrity. It has lost its fairness. People who took the time and prepared for exams were no longer in a position to take those exams,” Igariwey said.

“What we mainly did was to say these exams just must be done the proper way, the right way. So, that’s why we are saying that the exam has to be cancelled, so that the right thing is done in the first place.

“Because we believe that JAMB cannot just come out and say they have gone on with the exam.”

Prof Ishaq Oloyede, the JAMB Registrar, had in a tearful address claimed that a “technical glitch” and “human error” caused the issues  but the lawmaker said the decision to reschedule the exams within 48 hours was “unreasonable and poorly thought out.”

“If you recall, you see that we were very restrained in taking a decision. The caucus reacted to what Professor Ishaq (Oloyode) told Nigerians on the 14th of May,” he said.

“He admitted to what we have described as a catastrophic institutional failure, where nearly 400,000 students who took exams in April were asked to come and re-sit those exams.

“That has never happened in the history of this country. And I’m sure it came as a shock to Nigerians.

“JAMB came out two days after— or that same day or the next day— to announce that students would have to go back to classrooms, and 48 hours after, to re-sit those same examinations. Now, those examinations were conducted on the 16th of May.”

Igariwey pointed out that many candidates could not resist the examination for no fault of theirs.

“We all got reports from our various constituencies. A lot of students could not make it to the examination halls. So a lot of people could not sit for those re-sit exams. And that was our major concern,” the lawmaker said.

“JAMB cannot just, after two days, set another set of exams. You haven’t even told Nigerians that you have corrected whatever led to the initial problem.

“People are calling for an investigation. People are calling for an examination of what happened. And then you have set those exams right immediately again.

“Students are unable to have access. So either they will go, and they will hear it’s not going to be in this centre again; it’s going to be in the other centre. A whole lot of people didn’t take those exams.”