UTME Resit: 379,000 candidates awaits results on Wednesday

Over 300,000 students who were informed by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to resit their exams have been informed that their results would be out on Wednesday.

JAMB rescheduled the exam, after significant criticism over the huge failure during the first UTME. 

The board acknowledged that human and technical faults, particularly in Southeast states and Lagos, had a major impact on the performance of the applicants.

Over 1.5 million of the 1.9 million applicants who took this year’s UTME received scores below 200 out of 400, which alarmed several stakeholders.

Following sustained pressure, JAMB investigated the mass failure and discovered technical and human errors in its system.

JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, last week publicly accepted responsibility for the errors, even shedding tears while announcing a resit for the affected candidates.

JAMB’s spokesperson, Dr Fabian Benjamin, who spoke with the media, confirmed that the results of the rescheduled exams would be released on Wednesday.

“The results of the candidates who took the rescheduled exam will be released on Wednesday,” Benjamin said.

Oloyede had previously revealed that the UTME issues affected 379,997 candidates in Lagos and the five South-East states.

He said that 173,387 candidates in 92 centres in the South-East zone and 206,610 applicants in 65 centres around Lagos were impacted.

Oloyede referred to the event as “sabotage” and stated that beginning last Thursday, the impacted applicants would receive text alerts for the rescheduled exam.

Just 4,756 candidates (0.24 per cent) received a score of 320 or higher out of the 1,955,069 results that were processed from the original UTME. The total number of top-tier scorers (300 and above) was 12,414 (0.63%), with an additional 7,658 candidates (0.39%) scoring between 300 and 319.

334,560 (17.11%) applicants scored between 200 and 249, while 73,441 (3.76%) candidates scored between 250 and 299 as well.

983,187 applicants, or 50.29 per cent, received scores in the range of 160 to 199, which is often regarded as the minimal requirement for admission to many universities. 57,419 (2.94 per cent) scored between 120 and 139, 3,820 (0.20 per cent) scored between 100 and 119, 2,031 (0.10 per cent) scored below 100, and another 488,197 (24.97 per cent) scored between 140 and 159.