The South-East Senate caucus has expressed serious concerns over what it describes as a “curious and highly suspicious” technical glitch during the recent Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
The problem notably impacted examination centres in Lagos State and across the entire South-East geopolitical zone.
In a statement released on Saturday in Abuja, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, chairman of the caucus and representative of Abia South, warned against any deliberate attempts to undermine the educational prospects of South-East youths. “It would be disheartening and we hope not to contemplate such a conspiracy theory, that there is a narrow agenda being pursued to deliberately shortchange and harm the future of our children,” he said.
While the senators acknowledged the efforts to mitigate the crisis, including the rescheduling of affected exams, they emphasized that any recurrence would be unacceptable. The caucus also welcomed the public apology issued by JAMB’s Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, describing it as a “timely acceptance of fault.”
However, Senator Abaribe cautioned that this display of remorse should not be a cover for a “future sinister agenda aimed at harming the educational advancement” of South-East children. He added, “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 caucus urged national education authorities to avoid injecting “hateful politics and narrow parochial considerations” into policy formulation and implementation. “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,” Abaribe stressed.
He concluded by emphasizing education as a critical pillar of national development: “Every child is entitled to it, therefore, we must not play roulette with it.” The South-East Senate Caucus remains on high alert, demanding firm assurances from JAMB and other educational bodies that such a scandalous error will never recur.
