379,997 candidates in 157 centres affected
Resit exam begins Friday
By Alade Adisa
Following the mass failure in this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination UTME conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has threatened legal action against the examination body.
This is just as JAMB admitted that technical error on its part accounted for 387,997 candidates in 157 centres not doing well in the exam.
The Chairman of ASUU-UNN, Comrade Óyibo Eze, while briefing newsmen in Nsukka on Wednesday, said the union would not hesitate to drag the Board to court over the mass failure of candidates in the exam.
Oyibo said the massive failure, which mostly affected candidates from the South East, was a deliberate attempt by JAMB to stop children from the zone from getting admission into tertiary education.
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“My office has been inundated with protests, calls and visits by parents and the general public on this deliberate massive failure in the 2025 JAMB examination.
“ASUU will challenge this result in court if JAMB fails to review the result and give candidates their merited scores.
“JAMB knows that children from South East must score higher before they can get admission whereas their counterparts in some parts of the country will use 120 JAMB score to get admission to read medicine in universities in their areas.
“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 majority of these are from the South East and Lagos State where many Igbos reside,” he said.
He called on governors from the South East to rise up and challenge this injustice targeted towards preventing children from the zone from gaining admission into higher institutions in the country.
“The governors in the zone should not sit and watch JAMB toy with the academic future of our children.
”I am not against the board punishing those found guilty of exam malpractice, but JAMB should not, because of these few candidates, fail the whole candidates in an exam centre,” he said.
The ASUU boss said that it was unbelievable and unacceptable that in the whole University Secondary School, Nsukka, no candidate that sat for the exam scored up to 200 in the UTME.
“This school has superlative students who have excelled in academics both inside and outside the school, how come all of them scored less than 200 in the exam.
“Even if JAMB discovered one or two candidates for exam malpractice, is that enough reason to fail all others who have prepared very hard for that exam,” he said.
Oyibo advised JAMB to act fast to do the needful by reviewing the result as that massive failure had become a national issue which might attract national protest if nothing urgent was done.
This is as JAMB, on Wednesday admitted responsibility for the mass failure that characterised the just-concluded 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
The Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, who addressed a press conference in response to public outcry that followed the development, tendered an unreserved apology to candidates affected.
“I understand that there are three powerful expressions which contain one word, two words and three words respectively. They are please, thank you and I am sorry. 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.
To this end, he announced that a total of 379,997 candidates, cutting across six states of the federation, would retake the examination from Friday May 16 to 18.
The affected states, according to Oloyede are five in the South East zone and Lagos in the South West. Specifically, they are Lagos, Imo, Anambra, Oyo, Abia and Ebonyi.
Oloyede, who held back tears while admitting responsibility for the ugly development, blamed the negligence of some JAMB staff, adding that candidates in 65 centres in Lagos and 92 in Owerri Zone, covering the five states in the South East, would rewrite the exam.
He appreciated public concerns over the mass failure, saying the Board would learn from its mistakes.
He said: “I appreciate all those who lent their voices to the strident complaints on the results we released because you all did so out of concern. I appreciate our critics immensely because they could have chosen to be indifferent.
” I agree with the person who said that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it is indifference; the opposite of art is not ugliness, it is indifference; the opposite of faith is not heresy, it is indifference; and the opposite of life is not death, it is indifference. By not being indifferent to JAMB, we are grateful.
“Today marks a moment we shall not soon forget – a day that should have been filled with celebration for what was, until recently, regarded as our most successful UTME exercise. Regrettably, this joy has been overshadowed by an easily avoidable error by one or two persons.
“Without equivocation, there has been a lot of hoopla since the results of 2025 UTME were released last Friday, 9th May 2025. Despite the fact that JAMB is a responsive organisation, the unusual level of public concerns and loud complaints has prompted us to do an immediate audit or review of what happened, which we ordinarily would have done in June.
“I want to make it clear that our review and investigation reveal that there are grounds for the complaints about our 2025 UTME results and this press conference is convened with a view to unveiling the bitter truth of our findings openly and objectively.
“We are all human after all but before any other thing, it is imperative that I shed light on the extent that JAMB goes to ensure quality in its processes and activities.”
He, however, regretted that, “Despite being able to identify the source of the problem and the affected centres, we are conscious of the painful damage it has inflicted on the reputation of JAMB.
“As the 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,” he noted.
Oloyede assured that JAMB remains “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,” he explained.
Meanwhile, JAMB, in a tweet on its verified X handle, said the affected candidates would be contacted to start reprint their examination slips very soon.
“Man proposes, God disposes. It has been established that a technical glitch affected 157 centres, out of the 887 centres in the 2025 UTME. This was basically responsible for the general low performance of the candidates scheduled to sit the examination in those centres.
“As such, all the affected candidates will be contacted to reprint their examination slips toward retaking their examinations starting from 16th May, 2023,” the Board said in the tweet.
Also reacting to the development, the National President of the National Parent Teacher Association of Nigeria NAPTAN, Alhaji Haruna Danjuma, told Vanguard that the fact that JAMB admitted errors on its part was commendable.
READ ALSO: JAMB blames technical glitch for poor UTME performance
“Let us first commend JAMB that they admitted some errors on their part. We also have been inundated with complaints from parents and candidates regarding the results from the exam. We had to send two of our national officers to the JAMB national headquarters in Bwari, Abuja on Tuesday and they were there assessing the whole process with JAMB officials and the number of candidates affected,” he said.
On the possibility of some other candidates who did not do well to also claim that technical glitches were responsible for their failure, Danjuma opined that JAMB gave the assurance that the number of candidates to rewrite the exam was arrived at after a very painstaking effort.
By Alade Adisa
