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JAMB 2025: Smart Tips to Avoid Another Round of Tears in 2026 UTME!

Sadly, there were major technical issues with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board’s (JAMB) 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). As a result, JAMB acknowledged the event for the first time, and its registrar, Professor Is-haq Oloyede, was moved to tears. Thousands of candidates across the country were impacted by these unforeseen difficulties, which led to annoyance and general public anxiety. For many students, the UTME is a crucial step, and this disruption could have a big effect on their future academic careers. As a student of cloud engineering and an analyst for the Security Operations Center, I felt obliged to look into the matter in order to comprehend the technical causes.

I will analyze the probable causes of these system failures and offer suggestions for future implementations that might aid in the development of a more resilient and flexible technical architecture, all while drawing on the fundamentals of contemporary digital infrastructure, system reliability, and incident response.

The 2025 bug can be linked to various modifications made by JAMB to enhance the exam’s efficiency and integrity. The modifications were made to improve the platform’s efficiency and responsiveness, implement a complete reorganization of question-and-answer possibilities, and improve the integrity of result analysis by switching from count-based to source-based analysis.

These modifications were intended to minimize latency and system crashes during large-scale CBT sessions, enhance auditability, and lessen exam misconduct. Nevertheless, instead of applying these modifications consistently across all clusters, JAMB applied them server-cluster-per-zone, resulting in variations in performance and output between zones.

Technical evaluation:

It appears that JAMB uses different regional server clusters based on the updates it applies to certain zones, like Kaduna but not Lagos. The ability of these regional clusters to function somewhat independently in technological administration, including the application of upgrades, seems to be a crucial component.

Patch drift is the term for the fragmented technical environment that results from applying upgrades to certain clusters but not others. A number of issues, including uneven test experiences, inconsistent data, elevated security threats, operational complexity, and delays, might result from this discrepancy.

One of the main technical causes of the pervasive problems seems to be the absence of a coordinated and consistent deployment plan.

Without a doubt, JAMB’s technical plans for the 2025 exam lacked a suitable implementation strategy. JAMB requires a centralized, automated, and verified system rollout pipeline that will guarantee uniform change in order to prevent a repetition in upcoming exams. In particular, JAMB is capable of the following:

Use a centralized control plane for patch distribution:

to define and automatically push updates, configurations, and scripts to all server clusters simultaneously. This ensures every part runs the same approved version, eliminating patch drift.

Use automated update rollout using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to manage infrastructure through code (e.g., Terraform, Ansible):

Automated deployment pipelines detect changes, validate them against tests, and push to all zones. Built-in safeguards like retries, rollbacks, and approval gates minimize human error.

Conduct canary testing and pre-exam validation.

Before full deployment, test significant changes in a small, isolated, or simulated environment. “Canary testing” observes system behavior under realistic conditions (response times, shuffling, result consistency) without impacting most candidates, allowing for adjustments.

Post-deployment validation & observability:

Continuously monitor the system using tools for metrics collection and log analysis. Automated checks compare expected vs. actual outcomes (e.g., shuffled results, biometric matches) and alert technical teams to discrepancies quickly. This observability enables proactive problem-solving.

High Availability (HA) through backup clusters and automated failover:

Implement standby server clusters in each zone that are kept up-to-date. Automated failover mechanisms redirect traffic to standby clusters if primary ones fail, minimizing disruption. Backups must be patched simultaneously with primary servers for consistency.

Comprehensive incident response plan:

Develop and regularly test a detailed plan for technical teams to follow during incidents. This includes early detection of problems, communicating internally and externally, mitigating impact, and restoring operations. A practiced plan ensures a coordinated and effective response, minimizing downtime and confusion.

To sum up, the 2025 JAMB problem emphasizes how crucial it is to have a robust, scalable, and well-planned infrastructure, particularly for a system that supports millions of users. High-demand platforms like JAMB’s system can become more dependable, safe, and flexible by utilizing tools like Infrastructure as Code, doing canary testing on new upgrades prior to deployment, and creating an incident response strategy.

This analysis makes a valuable addition to the discussion of how engineering principles and contemporary technology may help Nigeria provide vital national-scale digital services. Building more robust and intelligent public technology infrastructures for the benefit of all depends on learning from these experiences.

We are confident that if it were put into practice, there wouldn’t be any outcry the following year, and we wouldn’t have to watch any tears on national television.