The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has admitted errors in the results of some candidates who took the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME).
On Tuesday, the board commenced the review of the candidates’ results with some stakeholders after widespread complaints of low scores by candidates who have a track record of better performance.
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Speaking on the outcome of the review on Wednesday, JAMB Registrar Is-haq Oloyede, a professor, apologised to the candidates and admitted some errors.
Mr Oloyede said the board has decided that all candidates affected in 157 out of 882 centres will be contacted to retake their examinations starting Friday, 16 May.
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A total of 379,997 candidates across the 157 centres in Lagos and the South-east would retake their examinations.
“So, I appeal to the candidates and those affected by the error of our system to accept this explanation as the truth of the matter without embellishment, Please. I apologise and take full responsibility, not just in words,” he said.
Mr Oloyede said affected candidates would be contacted by JAMB through text messages sent to their registered phone numbers, email addresses, profiles, and phone calls.
He directed them to reprint their examination slips for the rescheduled examination dates.
He said the board has contacted the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), which is currently holding its West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE), to allow JAMB some slots for candidates to take the exams, and WAEC has agreed.
“Any candidate with a clash of timetable, particularly for Agricultural Science on Friday, would be rescheduled,” Mr Oloyede said.
“However, we have endeavoured 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.”
Magnitude of error
Mr Oloyede explained that the errors happened in 157 centres – 65 centres in the Lagos zone and 92 centres in the Owerri zone.
Lagos zone comprises only Lagos State but Owerri zone comprises the five South-east states: Abia, Enugu, Imo, Ebonyi and Anambra.
While 206,610 candidates were affected in the 65 centres in Lagos zone, 173,387 candidates were affected in 92 centres in Owerri zone.
He said the reviewers examined samples from across the country, but no sign of any abnormality has been detected in any centre other than the ones mentioned.
He added that the exercise continues.
How the error occurred
Mr Oloyede explained that JAMB groups the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) into ‘KAD vehicle’ and ‘LAG vehicle’ to manage operations efficiently and in a balanced way.
KAD vehicle comprises all South-south states and most Northern states except Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Niger, Kogi, and Abuja.
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LAG vehicle comprises all states in the South-west and South-east as well as Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Niger, Kogi, and Abuja.
He explained that the mixed grouping is deliberate and is meant to prevent any regional bias in how the examinations are organised across regions.
What went wrong
Mr Oloyede noted that after the mock exams, the board noticed that the exam questions were not properly shuffled in the LAG category. The board shuffles questions so candidates have different questions, which makes it harder to copy or cheat.
The board corrected this problem and tested the fix ahead of the actual UTME.
“However, on Friday 25 April, the second day of the actual UTME, JAMB found that there were omissions in the LAG category.”
Mr Oloyede said corrections were made instantly and tested on Saturday, Sunday and Monday before they were applied after 12 a.m. on Tuesday.
“That was why all the examinations from Tuesday till the end of UTME had no problem,” he said.
The correction that never worked
The JAMB Registrar said to correct and re-upload the results from LAG for the glitch from Thursday to Monday, the service providers concerned with the ‘LAG vehicle’ were deployed to effect the patch.
He said, unfortunately, the errors were still found in two locations –Lagos zone and Owerri Zone–, resulting in errors in the candidates’ results.
“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.
“Regrettably, this oversight went undetected prior to the release of the results.”
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