387,000 applicants from six states will repeat the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), according to the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).

During a press event in Abuja on Wednesday, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, the Registrar of JAMB, acknowledged responsibility for the huge failure that followed.

He declared that about 379,997 applicants who took the just finished 2025 exam will retake it in six different states.

Prof. Oloyede claimed he accepted full responsibility for the staff’s carelessness while sobbing uncontrollably and sporadically wiping his face with a handkerchief.

“As Registrar of JAMB, I hold myself personally responsible, including for the negligence of the service provider, and I unreservedly apologise for it and the trauma that it has subjected affected Nigerians to, directly and indirectly. Once again, we apologise and assure you that this incident represents a significant setback for the Board’s reputation.

“We remain committed to emerging stronger in our core values of transparency, fairness, and equity. It is our culture to admit error because we know that in spite of the best of our efforts, we are human, we are not perfect. The only consolation we have in this case is that it is just one of the two service providers that did not do well by uploading improperly but it was not a case of glitches nor sabotage.”

According to a statistical analysis of the 2025 UTME published by JAMB, more than 1.5 million out of the 1.95 million applicants received scores lower than 200.

A noteworthy 1,534,654 applicants, or 78.5 percent, scored below the 200 mark out of the 1,955,069 candidates who took the test, according to a post on its official X on May 5.

The performance pattern hasn’t altered significantly from last year to this one. Merely 25% of applicants achieved or cleared the 200 threshold in 2024, and only a very small number scored more than 300.

Regarding exam conduct, JAMB acknowledged that a number of applicants engaged in misconduct, and several more are being investigated. Some students experienced issues with biometric verification, and thousands of pupils missed class. JAMB stated that it intends to reschedule tests for individuals who have legitimate concerns when they are resolved.

After a flurry of public complaints about the 2025 UTME, including technological issues, unfinished questions, and abnormally low marks, the exam authority ordered an emergency review of the test on Monday.

The Board recognized what it called a “unusual volume of complaints” after the UTME results were announced last Friday in a statement released by its Public Communication Advisor, Fabian Benjamin.

It said that the change had led it to expedite its yearly post-examination review procedure, which normally occurs several months following the exercise.

“We are particularly concerned about the unusual complaints originating from a few states within the federation. We are currently scrutinizing these complaints in detail to identify and rectify any potential technical issues,” JAMB said in the statement.

Benjamin had added that if any faults were found in the system, the examination body would not hesitate to implement “ appropriate remedial measures.

The 2025 UTME technical mishap, according to the JAMB registrar on Wednesday, happened at 157 test centers (65 in Lagos and 92 in the Owerri zone) as a result of the service provider’s incorrect software patch application.

Oloyede clarified that in order to administer operations effectively and fairly, JAMB divides the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) into “KAD vehicles” and “LAG vehicles.”

With the exception of Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Niger, Kogi, and Abuja, the KAD vehicle includes all South-South states and the majority of Northern states.

All of the South-West and South-East states are included in the LAG vehicle, along with Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Niger, Kogi, and Abuja.

He clarified that the purpose of the mixed grouping is to avoid any regional bias in the way the exams are structured across different areas.

According to Oloyede, the board discovered that the test questions in the LAG category were not correctly jumbled following the practice exams. In order to make it more difficult for applicants to duplicate or cheat, the board rotates the questions.

Prior to the real UTME, the board fixed this issue and tested the solution.

“However, on Friday 25 April, the second day of the actual UTME, JAMB found that there were omissions in the LAG category.”

Corrections were made immediately and evaluated on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday before being implemented around 12 a.m. on Tuesday, according to Oloyede.

He said that this was the reason why there were no issues with any of the tests from Tuesday to the completion of the UTME.

The fix that didn’t work

According to the JAMB Registrar, the service providers involved with the “LAG vehicle” were deployed to implement the fix in order to rectify and re-upload the results from LAG for the problem from Thursday to Monday.

He stated that regrettably, the mistakes were still discovered in the Lagos and Owerri zones, which led to inaccurate results for the contestants.

“In clear terms, in the process of rectifying the issue, the technical personnel deployed by the Service Provider for LAG (Lagos and South-east zones) inadvertently failed to update some of the delivery servers,” he explained.

List of 6 affected states

1. Imo
2. Lagos
3. Anambra
4. Ebonyi
5. Abia
6. Enugu

According to JAMB’s press briefing, beginning on Friday, May 16, 2025, all impacted candidates in the 157 out of 882 centers will be called to retake their exams.

These applicants will be approached by JAMB by phone calls, text messages sent to their registered phone numbers, email addresses, and profiles.

For the revised exam dates, they will be instructed to rewrite their examination slips.

Although WAEC examinations are still in progress, JAMB pointed out that they had arranged with WAEC to prevent conflicts.

It’s said; “While not oblivious of the fact that WAEC examinations are ongoing, we have contacted WAEC and in an unprecedented show of solidarity, the Council has graciously decided to as much as possible accommodate us within the WAEC time-slot. Any candidate with a clash of timetable, particularly for Agricultural Science on Friday, would be rescheduled.

“However, we have endeavored to ensure that no such exist. Most, if not all, such candidates are scheduled for Saturday. Fortunately, the prescribed texts for SSCE are also the prescribed texts for UTME apart from the reading text of the UTME, which carries just 10 marks in our Use of English test.”