"Take My Words As They Are"—JAMB Registrar Oloyede Appeals to UTME Candidates

Claims that 379,997 applicants will retake the test.

ASUU issues a lawsuit threat

Error admission is allowed, according to NAPTAN

Affected candidates in 157 centers

“Take My Words As They Are”—JAMB Registrar Oloyede Appeals to UTME Candidates

The recently ended 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, or UTME, was characterized by widespread failures, which the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, or JAMB, acknowledged responsibility for on Wednesday.

Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, the registrar, apologized unconditionally to the impacted applicants during a news conference held in reaction to the public outcry that followed the occurrence.

“I am aware that there are three potent expressions that each contain one, two, or three words.” I apologize, thank you, and please. Therefore, I implore the candidates and all impacted by our system’s blunder to embrace this explanation as the unadulterated truth.

Please accept my sincere apology and accept full responsibility, not just verbally,” he stated.

For this reason, he said that 379,997 applicants from six states in the federation would retake the test on Friday, May 16, and Sunday, May 18.

Oloyede claims that Lagos in the Southwest and five states in the Southeast are the impacted states. Lagos, Imo, Anambra, Oyo, Abia, and Ebonyi are specifically among them.

Candidates at 65 centers in Lagos and 92 in Owerri Zone, which spans the five states in the Southeast, would retake the exam, Oloyede said, holding back tears as he acknowledged responsibility for the unsightly development.

He acknowledged the public’s worries about the mass failure and promised that the board would grow from its missteps.

“I appreciate everyone who voiced their strong objections to the results we released because you all did so out of concern,” he stated. Since our critics had the option of remaining unconcerned, I greatly like them.

I concur that the opposite of love is not hate but rather apathy; the opponent of art is not ugliness but rather indifference; the opposite of faith is not heresy but rather indifference; and the opposite of life is not death but rather indifference. We appreciate that JAMB is not treated with indifference.

We will never forget this day, which should have been a day of celebration for what was, until recently, thought to be our most successful UTME exercise. Unfortunately, one or two people made a mistake that was easily preventable, overshadowing this joy.

Since the 2025 UTME results were announced last Friday, May 9, 2025, there has undoubtedly been a lot of fuss. The unprecedented volume of public concerns and loud objections has forced us to do an audit or review of what transpired immediately, even though JAMB is a responsive organization. Normally, we would have done this in June.

“I want to be clear that our analysis and research show that there are valid concerns regarding our 2025 UTME results, and this news conference is being held to publicly and impartially convey the harsh reality of our findings.

“After all, we are all human, but before anything else, I must clarify the lengths to which JAMB goes to guarantee quality in its operations and procedures.”

However, he expressed regret, saying, “We are aware of the terrible harm it has caused to JAMB’s reputation, even though we were able to pinpoint the issue’s origin and the impacted centers.

“As the Registrar of JAMB, I accept full responsibility for my actions, including the carelessness of the service provider, and I sincerely apologize for the agony it has caused to Nigerians, both directly and indirectly. We sincerely apologize once more and reassure you that this occurrence is a serious blow to the board’s reputation,” he said.

JAMB is “committed to emerging stronger in our core values of transparency, fairness, and equity,” Oloyede reassured.

We are accustomed to admitting mistakes because we understand that, despite our best efforts, we are fallible human beings. He clarified, “The only comfort we have in this situation is that it is only one of the two service providers that performed poorly by uploading incorrectly, but it was not a case of glitches or sabotage.”

In a tweet sent on its verified X feed, JAMB stated that the impacted candidates would be contacted shortly to begin reprinting their exam slips.

“God decides, man suggests.” It has been determined that 157 of the 887 centers in the 2025 UTME were impacted by a technical issue.

This was essentially the cause of the candidates’ generally poor performance on the exams that were planned to be taken at those locations.

The board stated in the tweet that all impacted candidates would be notified to reprint their exam slips to retake their exams beginning on May 16, 2023.

ASUU issues a lawsuit threat

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) Branch, has commented on the news and vowed to sue JAMB for the significant failure in the 2025 UTME.

While briefing reporters in Nsukka on Wednesday, Comrade Óyyibo Eze, the chairman of ASUU-UNN, made the revelation.

Oyibo claimed that the significant setback, which primarily impacted Southeast candidates, was an intentional effort by JAMB to prevent children from being admitted to higher education.

“Parents and members of the public have flooded my office with calls, visits, and demonstrations regarding this willful, significant failure in the 2025 JAMB exam.

If JAMB does not examine the results and award candidates their merited scores, ASUU will contest this outcome in court.

“JAMB is aware that Southeast youngsters need to score higher to be admitted, whereas their counterparts in other regions of the country will need to score 120 to be admitted to local universities to study medicine.

“Out of 1,955,069 candidates who took the 2025 exam, over 1.5 million scored less than 200 in the JAMB recently released result. The majority of these candidates are from the Southeast and Lagos State, where many Igbos reside,” he stated.

He urged Southeast governors to take action against this injustice, which is aimed at keeping kids from the region from being admitted to the nation’s universities.

“The zone’s governors shouldn’t sit and watch JAMB play with our kids’ academic futures.”

“I have nothing against the board punishing those found guilty of exam malpractice, but JAMB shouldn’t fail all of the candidates in an exam center because of these few candidates,” he stated.

The head of ASUU declared that it was incomprehensible and unacceptable that no candidate who took the UTME in the entire University Secondary School in Nsukka received a score of 200 or higher.

“This school has exceptional pupils who have achieved academic success both inside and outside of the school. Why did they all receive exam scores below 200?

“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 added.

Oyibo encouraged JAMB to evaluate the results and take immediate action because the big failure had become a national problem, and if nothing urgent was done, it might spark nationwide protests.

Alhaji Haruna Danjuma, the National President of the National Parent Teacher Association of Nigeria (NAPTAN), also responded to the news by telling Vanguard that it was admirable that JAMB acknowledged its mistakes.

First, let’s applaud JAMB for acknowledging its mistakes. Additionally, we have received a ton of complaints about the exam results from both parents and candidates. To examine the entire process with JAMB officials and the number of candidates impacted, we had to dispatch two of our national officers to the JAMB national headquarters in Bwari, Abuja, on Tuesday,” he added.

Regarding the potential for any other underperforming candidates to assert that technological issues caused their failure, Danjuma believed that JAMB provided the guarantee that the number of applicants who would be required to retake the test was determined using a highly rigorous process.