JUST-IN:Jamb Registrar in tears,admits to error in 2025 UTME, orders resit for 387,000 candidates

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has admitted to a technical error that compromised the integrity of the results from the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in 157 centres nationwide.

Ishaq Oloyede, JAMB registrar, during a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday, said the results of over 387,000 candidates were affected.

He said the board discovered discrepancies linked to faulty server updates in its Lagos and Owerri 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 service providers for the exercise, went undetected before the results were released.

He said 65 centres in Lagos (206,610 candidates) and 92 centres in Owerri zone (173,387 candidates) were affected, bringing the total number of impacted candidates to 387,997.

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 per cent 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.

“The technical personnel deployed by the service provider for LAG inadvertently failed to update some of the delivery servers. Regrettably, this oversight went undetected before the release of the results,” Oloyede said.

The registrar said the board fast-tracked its usual post-examination review in response to public outcry and brought in independent experts, including top psychometricians and computer scientists, to audit the system.

He said a detailed sampling across all states has shown no abnormalities outside the identified centres