The South-East Caucus of the 10th House of Representatives has called for the resignation of the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Ishaq Oloyede, over the technical glitch recorded in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
It also called for the examination to be completely cancelled and a new date fixed for the exercise across the country.
In a statement signed by the caucus leader, Igariwey Iduma Enwo, the lawmakers described the examination’s outcome as a “national shame.”
They said, “To this end, we call for the immediate suspension of those at the commanding heights of JAMB’s digital operations and examination logistics.
“The registrar of JAMB is said to be a good man, but then, leadership must carry consequences. We, therefore, call on the Registrar of JAMB, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, to do the needful by resigning his appointment to pave the way for a thorough examination and remediation of the root causes of this national shame.
“That’s the way to go in any civilised democracy, and we expect no less.”
Oloyede admitted during a press briefing on May 14 that errors affected candidates’ performance during the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, which was held across different centres in the country.
“It is our culture to admit errors because we know that in spite of the best of our efforts, we are human; we are not perfect,” Oloyede said as he wiped tears off his eyes with a white handkerchief.
He also announced that about 379,997 candidates would retake the examination, following widespread complaints of technical glitches, unusually low scores, and alleged irregularities in the questions and the answers during the exercise.
JAMB said it established that a technical glitch affected 157 out of the 887 centres, leading to the candidates’ general low performance.
But the South-East lawmakers said they were concerned because the five southeastern states they represent, “with no exception,” were directly impacted by “JAMB’s so-called ‘score distortions’.”
According to them, the situation “is clearly a disastrous and catastrophic institutional failure that has shaken the trust and confidence of students and families across the country”.
The lawmakers also said apologies were not enough to address the implications of the national embarrassment that attended JAMB’s conduct of the 2025 UTME examination.
They added, “However, for the thousands of students across the five South Eastern states of Nigeria, the tainted and flawed outcome of the 2025 UTME examination has clearly stripped and denied them of any ‘equal and adequate educational opportunities”’.
