The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that 379,997 candidates who sat for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in the five South-East states and Lagos will be rescheduled for a new examination. This comes in the wake of technical Glitch that disrupted the initial test, leaving many candidates in limbo and sparking national concern about the integrity of the examination process.
At a press conference held in Abuja on Wednesday, the JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, acknowledged the issue and took full responsibility. “I apologise, I take full responsibility,” he said, attributing the disruption to what he described as a “sabotage” of the examination. According to him, the technical error affected 206,610 candidates in 65 centres across Lagos and 173,387 candidates in 92 centres within the South-East zone. The root of the problem was traced to faulty server updates and errors on the part of a technical service provider, which led to failure in uploading candidates’ responses during the first three days of the exam.
VIDEO
This is a country of really dangerous public officials; while @JAMBHQ registrar is here forming, he “regrets” the monumental disaster he superintended upon that has claimed a young life, and instead of resigning immediately, he brought to the same press conference a bunch of… pic.twitter.com/Zg6LIDCvZs
— Omoyele Sowore (@YeleSowore) May 15, 2025
In response, the board has scheduled a fresh round of testing starting Friday, May 16, for all affected candidates. JAMB has assured that candidates will begin receiving notifications via SMS, email, and phone calls, and they are urged to reprint their examination slips to obtain updated details about their rescheduled test dates and venues. In a bid to prevent further complications, JAMB is also coordinating with the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to ensure that the new UTME dates do not clash with the ongoing WASSCE examinations.
This revelation adds to mounting frustrations after the release of the 2025 UTME results on May 9, which showed an alarming drop in candidate performance. Of the 1.9 million candidates who sat for the exam, more than 1.5 million—over 78 percent—scored below 200 out of a maximum of 400 marks. Only 12,414 candidates (0.63%) scored 300 and above, while just 4,756 (0.24%) exceeded the 320 mark, a performance typically regarded as exceptional.
Further breakdown revealed that 334,560 candidates (17.11%) scored between 200 and 249, while 983,187 (50.29%) scored between 160 and 199—considered the baseline score for many Nigerian institutions. Alarmingly, over half a million candidates scored below 160, with 2,031 candidates scoring less than 100, raising questions about the effectiveness of the current testing system and the preparedness of the candidates.
Professor Oloyede explained that a software update meant to support a shuffled answer option feature during grading was not properly installed on some of the delivery servers in the affected zones. This lapse, he noted, went undetected during pre-examination testing. He added that following the initial outcry, JAMB accelerated its post-examination review process and brought in independent experts, including psychometricians and computer scientists, to conduct a thorough audit of the system.
The good news, according to Oloyede, is that outside the identified problematic centres, a detailed sampling across other states revealed no systemic abnormalities. Nonetheless, the incident has sparked protests and heated debates, with many questioning not only the credibility of this year’s UTME but also the effectiveness of Nigeria’s current educational testing infrastructure.
As thousands of students await the rescheduled examination, there is a renewed call for greater transparency, accountability, and technological integrity in future assessments. For now, JAMB’s ability to restore trust and conduct a fair and accurate resit will be under close national scrutiny.
RELATED
UTME 2025: 19-yr-old commits suicide over Jamb low score
