Over 1.5 Million Candidates Petition JAMB Over Poor UTME Results — Mass Outcry Rocks 2025 Exams!

Given that 1,534,654 candidates who received scores below 200 have petitioned the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for a review of the process or face legal action, the recent dust raised over the poor performance of candidates in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) may take a lot longer to settle.

By means of their attorney, John Nwobodo, the candidates are utilizing the Freedom of Information Act in the petition dated May 12 to ask JAMB to examine the questions and responses to see whether they correspond with the information provided by the candidates.

Nwobodo provided more information about the candidates, stating that they include 2,031 individuals with scores below 100, 3,820 individuals with scores between 100 and 119, 57,419 individuals with scores between 120 and 139, 488,197 individuals with scores between 140 and 159, and 983,187 individuals with scores between 160 and 199.

“The board announced that only about 22 percent of candidates scored 200 and above, while over 70 percent scored below 200,” he said in a statement that accompanied the official release of the results.

The numbers show the highest failure rate in the history of the JAMB-conducted exam, he claimed, prompting public outrage and concern about the cause of the perplexing and shockingly low performance.

Our customers strongly contest the results, arguing that they do not accurately represent their work and that there may have been a mistake in the JAMB software that caused the discrepancy between the questions and the answers.

The aforementioned situation has raised issues about the reliability of the software the board used to administer and grade the tests. Regretfully, the system is set up so that applicants can only see their overall score as well as their scores for each topic. Furthermore, the development has brought attention to your board, making responsibility now and moving forward essential and non-negotiable.

“Under the current situation, the board’s transparency and accountability requirements necessitate a system reconfiguration that shows the questions and their related answers in addition to the candidates’ total score. This strategy could either validate the board’s published results, which would increase the board’s respect and public trust, or it could dispel candidates’ doubts or lead to a result that calls for the implementation of suitable reforms to strengthen the examination’s integrity, which would benefit future exams and address legitimate cases from the most recent one.

In order to allow for self-evaluation, Nwobodo claimed to have fully briefed the candidates and asked the board to fully disclose the questions and responses given to each of them.

In order to ensure that the right answers were fixed against the questions, “Your board should undertake a comprehensive review of the marking of the questions administered to ascertain that the correct answers were fixed against the questions.” They also stated that they will pursue all available legal options in order to bring the harmed candidates justice.