Speaking during an interview, Igariwey, who also leads the South-East Caucus in the House, said the recent admission of error in the conduct of the 2025 UTME by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) was not enough to justify continuing with the entrace test.
According to him, the integrity of the entire examination process has been compromised.
\u201cThe 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat we mainly did was to say these exams just must be done the proper way, the right way. So, that\u2019s 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 paper over an examination and say they have gone on with the exam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reacting to JAMB\u2019s claim that a \u201ctechnical glitch\u201d and \u201chuman error\u201d caused the issues, Igariwey stressed that the decision to reschedule the exams within 48 hours was \u201cunreasonable and poorly thought out.\u201d
\u201cIf 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,\u201d he said.
\u201cHe 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\u2019m sure it came as a shock to Nigerians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJAMB came out two days after\u2014or that same day or the next day\u2014to 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,\u201d Igariwey stated.
He noted that reports from across the South-East indicated that many candidates could not access their designated centres due to the abrupt rescheduling and confusion over logistics.
\u201cWe 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,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So JAMB cannot just, after two days, set another set of exams. You haven\u2019t 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.\u201d
He added, \u201cStudents are unable to have access. So either they will go, and they will hear it\u2019s not going to be in this centre again; it\u2019s going to be in the other centre. A whole lot of people didn\u2019t take those exams.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Caucus Demands Resignation, Fresh Examination<\/strong> They called for the suspension of officials responsible for JAMB\u2019s digital operations and logistics, insisting that leadership must bear consequences. \u201cWe call on the Registrar of JAMB, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, to do the needful by resigning\u2026 That\u2019s the way to go in any civilised democracy,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The South-East lawmakers said the issue had severely impacted all five states in the region and demanded full accountability. They warned that trust in JAMB had been eroded and that apologies alone were not enough. The board also confirmed 97 cases of malpractice and over 71,000 absentees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Speaking during an interview, Igariwey, who also leads the South-East Caucus in the House, said the recent admission of error in the conduct of the 2025 UTME by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) was not enough to justify continuing with the entrace test. According to him, the integrity of the entire examination process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/IMG_2283.jpg?fit=290%2C174&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13760,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13759\/revisions\/13760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Earlier, the South-East Caucus of the 10th House of Representatives demanded the resignation of JAMB Registrar, Oloyede, and the cancellation of the 2025 UTME nationwide.
In a statement signed by caucus leader Igariwey, the lawmakers described the conduct of the examination as a \u201cnational shame,\u201d citing systemic failure and widespread technical issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a press briefing on 14 May, Oloyede admitted to errors during the exams and apologised, stating, \u201cWe are human; we are not perfect.\u201d
He confirmed that 379,997 affected candidates would resit the exam beginning 16 May, following complaints of low scores and technical failures at 157 of 887 centres nationwide.
JAMB reported that over 78% of 1.95 million candidates scored below 200, with only 12,414 scoring 300 or above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n