Abuja, Nigeria
The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, says the error in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination was not an ethnic sabotage.
Reactions from stakeholders followed the result of the 2025 UTME, which was released on May 9 by JAMB.
In the breakdown released by the board, more than 78 percent of candidates could not score up to 200, which represents half of the 400 maximum points obtainable.
The board invited some key stakeholders to review the results and found a major “technical error” which affected most candidates from Southeast states and Lagos.
On May 14, the registrar said that the results of 379,997 candidates across 157 centres in its Lagos and south-east zones were affected and took full responsibility for the errors.
He cited faulty server updates that led to the failure to upload candidate responses during the first three days of the exam.
Oloyede said the problem, which was caused by one of its technical service providers, went undetected before the results were released.
JAMB held a resit examination beginning on May 16 and continuing past May 19.
On Wednesday in Abuja, Oloyede met with chief external examiners, representatives of civil society organisations, and stakeholders from tertiary institutions.
During the meeting, he responded to critics calling for his resignation over the UTME crisis, dismissing claims of an ethnic conspiracy.
“I’m not interested in the ethnic identity of those who committed the mistake. As far as I’m concerned and to the best of my knowledge, there was no sabotage. There was no glitch. What happened was a human error committed by certain individuals,” he said.
“It does not matter to me whether they are Igbo or not. What matters is that they are diligent workers for the service providers. They committed a mistake, and we rectified it. I’ve accepted the mistake on behalf of everybody.”
On May 15, the House of Representatives said it would investigate the examination body over the reported technical error.
Also on May 19, the South-East caucus in the House had called for the resignation of the JAMB registrar.
The lawmakers also urged the cancellation of the 2025 UTME and the conduct of a fresh examination.
While some stakeholders alleged an ethnic conspiracy, the lawmakers argued that the South-East states were disproportionately affected by the error.
