System Glitches and Parental Agony: Chaos and Confusion at Chumet JAMB CBT Resit Centre, Nnewi

 

A cloud of confusion and quiet frustration hung heavily over the Chumet JAMB CBT Centre in Nnewi on the morning of the much-anticipated resit examination. Candidates and their parents began trooping into the venue before dawn, many arriving as early as 6:30 a.m. in anticipation of a seamless process. What met them, however, was an unsettling lack of direction and a palpable absence of adequate personnel to manage the situation.

By 7:00 a.m., the area outside the centre had transformed into a waiting ground for scores of bewildered candidates and their increasingly anxious guardians. Civil Defense officers, along with a single JAMB official manning the centre’s computer desk, appeared to be the only authorities on ground. Their sparse presence offered little clarity to the swelling crowd. An inquiry to the JAMB official yielded a terse response: "They are setting up the systems." The tone made it clear that no further conversation would be entertained.

Reluctantly, parents and guardians retreated to their waiting spots—some choosing to remain under the rising sun, others retreating to the shelter of their vehicles. Eventually, a call went out summoning candidates to begin check-in. That process, too, proved frustratingly slow. The last of the students weren’t fully checked in until 7:39 a.m., over an hour after the originally scheduled start time.

With the session expected to last two and a half hours, many parents settled in to wait patiently. Yet the calm would not last. About 90 minutes later, a jarring revelation arrived not from an official, but a teenage boy in a sleeveless singlet who strolled casually out of the centre and hopped onto a power bike. When asked if he had finished the exam, he shook his head. The exam hadn’t even started, he said. The new start time? 3:00 p.m.

Alarmed by the news, a concerned parent approached the officials again. By then, a young man with unkempt hair had appeared, seeming to hold some undefined authority in the absence of senior personnel. The story became clearer, though no less troubling. Out of the 182 candidates scheduled for the 6:30 a.m. session, only 124 had successfully logged into the system. The remaining 58 were told to return by 3:00 p.m. for a possible second chance.

When pressed about the status of one particular candidate, officials insisted that any student who had failed to log in would have been sent out of the hall. By 10:50 a.m., one relieved parent was reunited with their child who had just completed the session—an outcome not all parents would enjoy.

Tales of sacrifice and distress echoed among those still waiting. One woman recounted her exhausting morning journey from Owerri, navigating to two different centres—Ukpor and Nnewi—with her children. Ironically, she expressed relief at the delay, as it gave her a chance to meet both children's scheduling demands. But uncertainty still loomed for her and dozens of others whose wards faced the second attempt in the afternoon.

Nearby sat a young teacher, shoulders heavy with responsibility. She had chaperoned an entire busload of students from Holy Child Academy in Amichi for the early morning session. To her dismay, not one of her students managed to log in. Despite encouragement to return to school for rest and refreshment, the students chose to remain on-site, unwilling to miss the slim window for a second shot at the exam.

As the clock ticked toward the new 3:00 p.m. session, the centre remained a picture of systemic failure and emotional strain. Parents lingered, clutching onto hope and plastic bags of snacks. Students leaned against walls, silently reciting facts or simply staring into space, caught between frustration and fatigue.

Whether the afternoon session would go any smoother remained uncertain. What was abundantly clear was that, once again, candidates and their families bore the brunt of poor preparation and opaque communication from the examination authorities. For many, it wasn’t just a resit—it was a test of patience, endurance, and trust in a system that had failed to learn from its own errors.

[Source]