- Says no abnormalities outside identified centres
BONNY AMADI WITH AGENCY REPORTS
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has admitted to a technical error that compromised integrity of the results from the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in 157 centres nationwide.
During a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday, Ishaq Oloyede, JAMB registrar, said the results of 379,997 candidates were affected, as he added that a detailed sampling across all states showed no abnormalities outside the identified centres.
He said the board discovered discrepancies linked to faulty server updates in its Lagos and south-east zones, which led to the failure to upload candidates’ responses during the first three days of the examination.
Oloyede said the problem, which was caused by one of the two technical ser vice providers for the exercise, went undetected before the results were released.
He said 65 centres in Lagos (206,610 candidates) and 92 centres in the southeast zone (173,387 candidates) were affected, bringing the total number of impacted candidates to 379,997.
To address the issue, JAMB said it will conduct a rescheduled UTME for all affected candidates starting Friday, May 16.
The board said affected candidates will be notified via SMS, email, and phone calls, and are advised to reprint their examination slips for details on the rescheduled tests.
Oloyede noted that JAMB has engaged with the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to ensure that the rescheduled UTME does not clash with ongoing WASSCE examinations.
“As registrar of JAMB, I hold myself personally responsible, including for the negligence of the service provider. I unreservedly apologise for it,” Oloyede said.
The results from JAMB’s 2025 UTME were released on May 9.
An analysis indicated that more than 78 percent of candidates scored less than 200 points out of the 400 maximum obtainable points.
This spurred protests that questioned the overall integrity of the examination process.
Oloyede said, following mock examinations and system updates, the board insisted on implementing shuffled answer options in the UTME.
Despite layers of testing, he said an oversight occurred during grading updates for the LAG examination zone, which includes the south-west, south-east, and parts of the north.
He said this led to the deployment of a software patch, which was not properly applied in some delivery servers in the affected zones.
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