The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has acknowledged that technical mistakes had an impact on candidates’ performance in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, which was administered at several locations throughout the nation.
This came after numerous complaints about apparent inconsistencies in the questions and answers, extremely low results, and technological issues during the exercise.
Ishaq Oloyede, the board’s registrar, broke down in tears when he acknowledged the mistake during a media briefing in Abuja on Wednesday, pointing out that the board was aware of the damage such an error portends to the education system.
“Once again, we apologise and assure you that this incident represents a significant setback…. We remain committed to emerging stronger in our core values of transparency, fairness and equity.
“It is our culture to admit errors because we know that in spite of the best of our efforts, we are human; we are not perfect,” Oloyede said as he wiped tears off his eyes with a white handkerchief.
He also announced that about 379,997 candidates in the just concluded 2025 exercise would retake the examination.
This followed widespread complaints of technical glitches, unusually low scores, and alleged irregularities in the questions and the answers during the exercise.
However, in a post on its X handle on Wednesday, the examination body established that a technical glitch affected 157 out of the 887 centres.
It said this was responsible for the general low performance of the candidates.
It said, “Man Proposes, God Disposes! It has been established that a technical glitch affected 157 centres out of the 887 centres in the 2025 UTME. This was basically responsible for the general low performance of the candidates scheduled to sit the examination in those centres.
“As such, all the affected candidates will be contacted to reprint their examination slips towards retaking their examinations starting from 16th May, 2025.”
JAMB had earlier released a statistical breakdown of the 2025 UTME, which revealed that over 1.5 million of the 1.95 million candidates who took the examination scored below 200.
In a post on its official X on May 5, it highlighted that 1,955,069 candidates sat for the examination, and 1,534,654 candidates, representing 78.5 per cent, scored below the 200 mark.
Meanwhile, human rights activist Omoyele Sowore has called for the immediate abolition of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB; National Youth Service Corps, NYSC; Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund; and the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, labelling them as “extracurricular bureaucratic busybodies.”
In a post he made on X, formerly Twitter, which seemed to be in reaction to the JAMB glitch acknowledgement, the social activist expressed displeasure in some of these government agencies, ending his post with the hashtag revolution now.
