Since the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) admitted to a technical glitch that distorted the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) results of over 300,000 candidates, accusations have emerged that the error was a deliberate attempt to target candidates of Igbo origin.
While some have praised JAMB for owning up and working to correct the error, others have accused the board of bias and demanded the resignation of its Registrar, Is-haq Oloyede, a professor.
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Some persons have also accused the board of deliberately targeting candidates from the South-east to fail.
However, a source in JAMB told PREMIUM TIMES that this couldn’t have been the case as most of the officials involved in processing the affected results are from the South-East.
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The source also provided PREMIUM TIMES with the names of some of the officials who are from the South-east, including the head of the IT company who made the error.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the insinuations are both divisive and ridiculous.
The source explained that the chief operating officer (COO) of the service provider is an Igbo man from Delta State, Jeffrey Onochi.
“He did the processing of the result for JAMB. Are you saying he will agree to target Igbo candidates,” the source questioned.
PREMIUM TIMES also gathered that there are individuals of Igbo extraction among the team tasked with installing the failed patch for Lagos and the South-east.
The source identified some of them as Stanley Agu from Imo State and John Chima Iheonu from Abia State.
The source added that the two JAMB supervisors for the affected Lagos and Owerri Zone – Uche Ohielo and Collins Ojiere– are from the South-east.
The JAMB director in charge of the Owerri Zonal Office/Headquarters Annex is also Igbo, Gloria Anyaegbu, from Anambra.
“There is no way these people will deliberately sabotage candidates from their own areas,” the source said, describing such claims as nonsensical.
“Jamb staff members and service providers are professionals and are not influenced by sentiments – ethnic, political, religious, or any other such considerations.”
The JAMB UTME Glitch
Last Wednesday, JAMB Registrar Mr Oloyede, disclosed that a glitch affected the results of 379,997 candidates across 157 centres in Lagos and the South-east.
JAMB found the glitch after it hastened the review of the 2025 UTME following widespread concerns among candidates that they have had a track record of better performances in the UTME.
After the review, JAMB found that the error affected 379,997 candidates of the 1.9 million who sat the examination.
According to JAMB, the glitch affected only two of its zones –Lagos Zone and Owerri Zone. Lagos Zone comprises only Lagos State and Owerri Zone comprises the five states in the South-east – Anambra, Imo, Abia, Ebonyi, and Enugu states.
The board explained that 65 Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres were affected in the Lagos zone and 92 CBT centres in the Owerri Zone.
The board also rescheduled the UTME for affected candidates to remedy the situation.
Knocks, Accusations
Meanwhile, prominent Nigerians and other social media users are spreading a narrative that the glitch deliberately targeted candidates from the South-east and of Igbo origin.
For instance, the Ohanaeze Youth Council, OYC, the youth wing of the apex lgbo Socio-cultural Organisation, accused the board of orchestrating the technical glitches that resulted in mass failure of candidates from South-east regions, and Igbo students studying in Lagos State.
“The manipulated mass failure orchestrated by JAMB against Igbo students in South-east and Lagos has become a historical precedent where Igbo are perceived as potential victims in Nigeria,” the group said.
The Chairperson of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) chapter, Óyibo Eze, also made remarks suggesting sabotage against candidates from the South-east.
“In the JAMB recently released result, out of 1,955,069 candidates who sat for the 2025 examination, over 1.5 million candidates scored less than 200, and the majority of these are from the South-east and Lagos State, where many Igbos reside,” Mr Eze said.
“The Nigerian government has now moved to a new phase of targeting the Igbo’s, focusing on hindering the progress of their children by using institutions like JAMB to suppress their academic success,” popular activist Omotayo Williams, posted via @KadunaResident.
Another X user, Cuban Ben posted: ““What JAMB did was an intentional terrorist attack targeting Igbos. Lagos was simply collateral damage, caught in the crossfire.”
But the JAMB official who responded to questions from PREMIUM TIMES on Wednesday said the claims are misleading and divisive.
“The allegations are completely false,” the official said. “I can tell you categorically that what the registrar said about the matter is nothing but the truth. It is a technical glitch, and there’s no iota of truth in the claims that Igbo people were targeted. That claim is nonsensical and divisive.”
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