The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has officially admitted to technical errors in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), affecting the results of 379,997 candidates in Lagos and South-East zones.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, made this disclosure during a press conference in Bwari, Abuja, where he offered an emotional apology and took full responsibility for the lapses.
“I apologise for the trauma caused to the candidates and I take full responsibility for this,” Oloyede stated.
According to him, the affected candidates sat for the exams in 157 centres — 65 in Lagos (206,610 candidates) and 92 in Owerri zone (173,387 candidates). The error arose when service providers failed to properly update delivery servers during a system patch.
“Technical personnel deployed by the service provider for the LAG zone failed to update some delivery servers. This oversight unfortunately went undetected prior to the release of results,” he explained.
JAMB revealed that the error was tied to its internal operational structure, which used two data “vehicles”: KAD and LAG. The glitch occurred in the LAG system which managed Southern states (excluding South-South) and a few northern states where shuffled examination options failed to load correctly.
The board disclosed that the technical patch issued on April 29 caused further result discrepancies for candidates who wrote exams between April 25 and the days following, especially in Lagos and the South-East.
The 2025 UTME saw only 21.5% of the 1.9 million candidates scoring above 200, sparking public outrage and social media campaigns calling for remarking and result verification.
Despite the widespread discontent, JAMB noted a historic top score of 374 the highest in over 15 years but admitted that overall performance was lower than in previous years.
Prof. Oloyede assured Nigerians that corrective measures are underway and pledged the board’s renewed commitment to transparency and fairness.
