The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has attributed the widespread failure in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in South-East and Lagos to human error, dismissing claims of system failure or administrative manipulation.
During a press briefing on May 14, 2025, JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, emotionally acknowledged a critical oversight in the deployment of a system patch, which affected 157 examination centres and approximately 379,997 candidates.
A high-level technical review revealed that a patch supporting new shuffling and source-based validation protocols was not applied to the LAG server cluster servicing Lagos and South-East, leading to mismatched answer validation.
This error, undetected until the 17th session, severely impacted results. JAMB has since collaborated with the Educare Technical Team to verify the issue, confirming that over 14,000 candidate records from affected regions were compromised.
In response, JAMB has offered affected candidates a free re-examination, coordinating with WAEC to avoid scheduling conflicts. Candidates are advised to reprint their slips by May 17, 2025, for updated test schedules. Professor Oloyede issued a heartfelt apology, emphasizing JAMB’s commitment to transparency through independent reviews and improved deployment protocols.
