The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has
admitted to a technical error that compromised the integrity of the results
from the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in 157 centres
nationwide.
Ishaq Oloyede, JAMB registrar, during a press conference in
Abuja on Wednesday, said the results of over 387,000 candidates were affected.
He said the board discovered discrepancies linked to faulty
server updates in its Lagos and Owerri zones, which led to the failure to
upload candidates’ responses during the first three days of the examination.
Oloyede said the problem, which was caused by one of the two
technical service providers for the exercise, went undetected before the
results were released.
He said 65 centres in Lagos (206,610 candidates) and 92
centres in Owerri zone (173,387 candidates) were affected, bringing the total
number of impacted candidates to 387,997.
To address the issue, JAMB said it will conduct a
rescheduled UTME for all affected candidates starting Friday, May 16.
The board said affected candidates will be notified via SMS,
email, and phone calls, and are advised to reprint their examination slips for
details on the rescheduled tests.
Oloyede noted that JAMB has engaged with the West African
Examinations Council (WAEC) to ensure that the rescheduled UTME does not clash
with ongoing WASSCE examinations.
“As registrar of JAMB, I hold myself personally responsible,
including for the negligence of the service provider. I unreservedly apologise
for it,” Oloyede said.
The results from JAMB’s 2025 UTME were released on May 9.
An analysis indicated that more than 78 per cent of
candidates scored less than 200 points out of the 400 maximum obtainable points.
This spurred protests that questioned the overall integrity
of the examination process.
Oloyede said, following mock examinations and system
updates, the board insisted on implementing shuffled answer options in the
UTME.
Despite layers of testing, he said an oversight occurred
during grading updates for the LAG examination zone, which includes the
south-west, south-east, and parts of the north.
He said this led to the deployment of a software patch,
which was not properly applied in some delivery servers in the affected zones.
“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,”
Oloyede said.
The registrar said the board fast-tracked its usual
post-examination review in response to public outcry and brought in independent
experts, including top psychometricians and computer scientists, to audit the
system.
He said a detailed sampling across all states has shown no
abnormalities outside the identified centres.
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
