JAMB Registrar in Tears as Error Forces UTME Resits in Lagos, South-East
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has confirmed that a significant technical error, resulting from a critical oversight in server updates and compounded by human error, led to the invalidation of results for 379,997 candidates who sat for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) across the South-East states and Lagos.
This revelation emerged during a high-level technical review session held on Wednesday at JAMB’s headquarters in Abuja.
The emergency meeting, chaired by the Registrar of JAMB, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, was convened in response to a nationwide outcry following the release of unusually low UTME scores the previous week.
According to JAMB, the root of the issue was the uneven deployment of a critical server patch, a software update necessary to support major innovations introduced in this year’s UTME.
While the patch was successfully applied to servers in the Kaduna cluster, it was not deployed to the Lagos (LAG) server cluster, which services Lagos and the South-East. This oversight caused severe mismatches during the marking process, leading to inaccurate interpretation of candidates’ answers.
An independent audit conducted in collaboration with the Educare Technical Team reviewed data from over 18,000 candidates, of which 15,000 authentic response logs were analysed. The investigation found that over 14,000 of these were traced to centres under the affected LAG cluster.
Altogether, 157 examination centres were identified as compromised, 92 in the South-East and 65 in Lagos. The affected candidates, totalling 379,997, will be required to resit the UTME starting Friday, May 16, 2025, and will be notified via SMS.
During the press briefing, an emotional Professor Oloyede admitted that the situation was caused by a systemic failure and took full responsibility for the oversight. He apologised sincerely, stating:
“There are three powerful expressions: one word, two words, and three words—‘Please’, ‘Thank you’, and ‘I am sorry’. I appeal to the affected candidates to accept this explanation as the truth, without embellishment, please. I say a big thank you to those who have supported us. And for the inconvenience, I am sorry—on behalf of JAMB.”
He emphasised that the board would be implementing stronger deployment validation protocols and real-time monitoring systems to prevent such occurrences in the future.
JAMB also clarified that the incident was not the result of system failure or administrative manipulation, but rather a technical and human error that went undetected until after the results were released.
