The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has acknowledged a serious technical error that compromised the results of 379,997 candidates who sat for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) across 157 centres nationwide.
JAMB registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed the issue during a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday. He revealed that faulty server updates in Lagos and Owerri zones led to the failure to upload candidates’ answers during the first three days of the exam.
The glitch affected 65 centres in Lagos, covering 206,610 candidates, and 92 centres in the Owerri zone, involving 173,387 candidates. Oloyede said the problem was caused by one of the two technical service providers and went undetected before results were released.
“As registrar of JAMB, I hold myself personally responsible, including for the negligence of the service provider. I unreservedly apologise for it,” he said.
JAMB plans to hold a rescheduled UTME for all affected candidates starting Friday, May 16. Notifications will be sent via SMS, email, and direct phone calls, and candidates are advised to reprint their exam slips for updated details.
To prevent conflicts with ongoing WASSCE exams, JAMB has liaised with the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to align schedules.
Oloyede explained that a system update intended to introduce shuffled answer options malfunctioned due to an improperly applied software patch in some delivery servers. “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,” he said.
The error was uncovered after public complaints and an unusually high failure rate. Over 78% of candidates reportedly scored below 200 out of a possible 400, prompting widespread protests.
In response, JAMB accelerated its post-exam review and invited independent experts to audit its systems. Their analysis confirmed that the error was limited to the specified centres, with no irregularities found elsewhere.
