The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has acknowledged a technical glitch that compromised the integrity of the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) results across 157 centres nationwide.
During a media briefing held in Abuja yesterday (14-05-2025), JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed that the issue affected the results of 379,997 candidates.
He explained that the discrepancies were traced to faulty server updates in the Lagos and South-East regions, which caused candidates’ responses to fail to upload during the first three days of the examination.
Oloyede attributed the problem to one of the two technical service providers engaged for the exercise, noting that the error was not discovered before the results were made public.
A total of 65 centres in Lagos, involving 206,610 candidates, and 92 centres in the South-East zone, with 173,387 candidates were impacted, bringing the total number to 379,997.
To rectify the situation, JAMB announced that a makeup UTME will be held for all affected candidates starting on Friday, May 16.
Candidates whose results were impacted will receive notifications via SMS, email, and direct phone calls.
They are also advised to reprint their examination slips to get the details of their new exam schedule.
Oloyede stated that JAMB is working with the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to ensure that the new examination dates do not clash with the ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
“As JAMB’s registrar, I take full responsibility for this situation, including the failure on the part of the technical service provider. I sincerely apologise,” he said.
The 2025 UTME results were initially released on May 9. A performance review revealed that over 78% of candidates scored below 200 out of the total 400 marks available.
This sparked nationwide protests and raised concerns over the credibility of the exam process.
Oloyede mentioned that the board had introduced shuffled answer options in the UTME, following system upgrades and mock tests.
However, he admitted that an error occurred in grading for the LAG examination zone — covering the South-West, South-East, and parts of the North due to a software patch that wasn’t correctly applied on certain delivery servers.
He clarified that technical staff from the service provider responsible for the LAG zone failed to update some delivery servers appropriately, and this went unnoticed before the results were released.
Oloyede added that a thorough analysis across all states confirmed that the issue was limited to the previously identified centres.
In response to widespread public concern, the board accelerated its usual post-exam audit and engaged external experts, including top computer Scientists and Psychometricians, to carry out an independent review.
