The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has admitted that there was a technical problem during the 2025 UTME and has announced that 379,997 students will have to take the exam again.
Speaking at a press conference in Abuja, JAMB’s boss, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, apologized to all affected candidates. He said the problem was caused by faulty server updates, which made the candidates’ answers not upload properly during the first three days of the exam.
Because of this issue, many students received wrong scores, especially in some exam centres. The affected candidates include:
- 206,610 students from 65 centres in Lagos, and
- 173,387 students from 92 centres in the South-East (Imo, Anambra, Abia, Ebonyi, and Enugu).
These students will retake the exam between Friday, May 16 and Sunday, May 18.
Professor Oloyede became emotional during the press briefing. He said JAMB noticed something was wrong after many bright students complained about getting low scores. After investigations, it was discovered that one of JAMB’s two tech providers made a mistake when trying to update the system. The problem happened because a software meant to mix up answer options didn’t work properly on all servers.
The issue was found in 157 centres out of 882 across Nigeria. To fix things, JAMB brought in outside experts to check their system. They also plan to work closely with WAEC, which is conducting WASSCE, to make sure there are no clashes between exam dates.
Students who are affected will get messages through SMS, email, phone calls, and also see updates on their JAMB profile. They must reprint their exam slips to see the new dates and centres.
Professor Oloyede ended by promising that JAMB is putting new systems in place to make sure this kind of mistake doesn’t happen again.
