Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu, has called on the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to immediately commission an independent audit of its Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) infrastructure following widespread technical disruptions during the 2025 exercise.
Hon. Kalu made the call in Abuja on Sunday, stressing the need for transparency and public trust in Nigeria’s examination systems. According to him, the audit should involve external system engineers, independent examiners, and academic measurement experts to assess the integrity of JAMB’s Computer-Based Testing (CBT) architecture.
“Nearly 380,000 candidates across 157 centers—especially in the South-East and Lagos—were directly affected by the failure of JAMB’s new scoring and validation systems. This is unacceptable,” Kalu said.
He expressed concern over the alleged failure to deploy a critical system patch intended to support the updated question-shuffling and answer-verification algorithms. The omission, he said, resulted in major technical disruptions and erroneous scoring, causing anxiety and frustration among candidates—some of whom are writing their school certificate examinations concurrently.
“The hurried rescheduling of the UTME resit, especially when it clashes with WAEC papers, shows poor coordination. Students are being forced to travel long distances without adequate preparation, which could affect their overall performance,” Kalu added.
The Deputy Speaker further recommended that JAMB publish anonymized, candidate-level results to allow for independent verification. He also called for the establishment of a transparent and accessible system for appeals and score remark requests.
Kalu emphasized that JAMB must adopt real-time system monitoring and deployment validation protocols going forward. “This isn’t just about testing infrastructure. It’s about the credibility of Nigeria’s educational system,” he warned.
He urged the Federal Ministry of Education and other stakeholders to support a full-scale reform of UTME administration and technology, saying, “The integrity of our national examinations must never be compromised by technical lapses or human error.”
As of press time, JAMB had not issued a formal response to the Deputy Speaker’s recommendations.
