The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) on Wednesday acknowledged that there was an error in this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). It also announced that a total of 379,997 candidates in Lagos and the five South-East states will be rescheduled for another sitting of the UTME.
JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed this during a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday, acknowledging that errors during the initial examination negatively affected the performance of some candidates.
Oloyede revealed that affected candidates will be sent messages with details of the examination rescheduled for this weekend.
He tendered an apology in a highly emotional manner and took full responsibility for the lapses.
He said, “After the mock examinations this year, we reviewed our LAG (which includes South West and South East states as earlier indicated) and KAD examination engines. We realised that in the LAG category, options to the items of our examinations were not shuffled. We insisted that the shuffling must be effected.
“After this was done, we tested the update as usual and we were satisfied. We thereafter still did what we call dummy, a simulation, a day before the examinations and everything seemed to be okay. In other words, we believed we were ready to deploy the items after some layers of testing the processes.
“However, on the second day of the examinations this year, which was Friday April 25, 2025, we discovered that there was some omission in the items within the LAG category. An update for correction and grading adjustment was instantly made and it was tested on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The update was applied after 12 a.m. on Tuesday morning and it was successful. That was why all the examinations from Tuesday till the end of UTME had no problem.
“To correct and re-upload the responses (i.e. results) from LAG for the pre-Tuesday glitch, the service providers concerned with LAG were deployed to effect the patch but there were patch errors in some centres (servers) for the first three or four days in only two locations.
“In simple terms, while 65 centres (206,610 candidates) were affected in Lagos zone (comprising only Lagos state), 92 centres (173,387 candidates) were affected in Owerri zone, which includes the South East states. In clear terms, in the process of rectifying the issue, the technical personnel deployed by the Service Provider for LAG (Lagos and South-East zones) inadvertently failed to update some of the delivery servers. Regrettably, this oversight went undetected prior to the release of the results.”
Apologising for the errors, Oloyede said, “Despite being able to identify the source of the problem and the affected centres, we are conscious of the painful damage it has inflicted on the reputation of JAMB.
“As Registrar of JAMB, I hold myself personally responsible, including for the negligence of the service provider, and I unreservedly apologise for it and the trauma that it has subjected affected Nigerians to, directly and indirectly.
“Once again, we apologise and assure you that this incident represents a significant setback for the Board’s reputation. We remain committed to emerging stronger in our core values of transparency, fairness, and equity. It is our culture to admit error because we know that in spite of the best of our efforts, we are human, we are not perfect. The only consolation we have in this case is that it is just one of the two service providers that did not do well by uploading improperly but it was not a case of glitches nor sabotage.”
“I understand that there are three powerful expressions which contain one word, two words and three words respectively. They are please, thank you and I am sorry. So, I appeal to the candidates and those affected by the error of our system to accept this explanation as the truth of the matter without embellishment, please. I apologise and take full responsibility not just in words,” he said.
“I am equally grateful to all stakeholders who have lent us their support and expertise in arriving at a logical conclusion that we have arrived at. And for the inconveniencies, once again, on behalf of JAMB, I say, I am sorry to all Nigerians.”
“We have decided that all the candidates affected in the 157 centres out of 882 centres will be contacted to retake their examinations starting from Friday, May 16, 2025,” he said.
“These candidates are to be contacted through text messages addressed to their registered phone numbers, their email addresses, their profiles and phone calls by JAMB. They are directed to reprint their Examination Slips for the rescheduled examination dates.”
Of the 1.9 million candidates who sat for the 2025 UTME, over 1.5 million scored below 200 out of a maximum of 400, raising concerns across Nigeria’s education sector.
JAMB, according to Oloyede, conducted a comprehensive review of the conduct and outcomes of the exam on Thursday.
The decision followed mounting pressure from education stakeholders, parents, and civil society groups who have condemned the dismal performance of candidates in this year’s examination.
JAMB received a formal request from a law firm, John Nwobodo & Associates, demanding the release of the 2025 UTME questions and answers for over 1.5 million candidates who scored below 200.
This followed concerns over the examination’s unprecedented failure rate, which saw more than 70% of candidates scoring under the pass mark of 200.
The law firm, which said it was representing the 1,534,654 candidates, raised the alarm about potential discrepancies in the results, suggesting a possible malfunction in JAMB’s software.
