The systemic error that upset the apple cart for 379,997 United Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) candidates is a grave national odium tinged with tragic connotations. The resultant pains bore holes in the hearts of many victims and percolated down the innards.
The immediate casualty of this almost insufferable error was Faith Opesusi, a frustrated candidate from Ikorodu, Lagos, who unfortunately took her own life by drinking a poisonous substance for scoring abysmal 146 out of 400 points.
Fate failed Faith. She was not patient enough to benefit from the reprieve that later came the way of her colleagues who had the opportunity to resit the same exam! Inscrutable fate played a fast, odious trick on her. Perhaps, things could have been different if the system had run seamlessly. Perhaps!
Expectedly, tensions had flared. Emotions ran riot. The obloquy was massive; the hoopla pervasive. While many commentators showed some understanding since no human system is infallible, some others, especially highly traumatized parents, were understandably unsparing, calling for the head of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede.
However, the response from the examination body was equally robust. It was prompt and decisive. The crisis management undertaken by JAMB’s Public Relations (PR)team was top notch. The principles of crisis communication imply promptness in response and transparency in addressing and admitting errors. The ‘buy-in’ of the public, their understanding are the cardinal goals at this stage. So, it is not a time to hide anything or pontificate on glaring shortcomings.
Prof. Oloyede’s conduct at last Wednesday’s press conference was particularly ennobling. It was a drastic departure from the hubris and haughtiness usually associated with the average Nigerian public servants. Unlike most of the power-mongers who are known to be inveterate snoots, who would want to rationalize their errors and parry scrutiny by the usual “we will investigate” mantra, Oloyede at the conference was quite transparent, humble, bold, humane and unpretentious. He admitted it all, took in the flaks all and displayed empathy to the point of tears. That is the hallmark of a leader in a crisis situation.
The detection of the tragic error was presaged by a nationwide hysteria over unusual low scores in the 2025 UTME immediately the results were released on Friday, May 9, 2025 by JAMB. More than 1.5 million out of 1.9 million candidates whose results were released scored below 200.
However, it came to light along the line that the mass failure was caused by glitches in the JAMB’s system. A technical review undertaken by the examination body had revealed that a critical oversight in server updates, coupled with human error, led to the invalidation of the results for 379,997 candidates in the five states of the South East and Lagos State who sat for the 2025 UTME.
The error was said to be rooted in the uneven deployment of a critical server patch required to support major innovations introduced in this year’s UTME. It was discovered that these upgrades were correctly applied to servers in the Kaduna (KAD) cluster, but they were not deployed to the Lagos (LAG) cluster, which services Lagos and the South-East region. This resulted in widespread mismatches in answer interpretation and validation.
The Registrar, Prof. Oloyede, who made these disclosures at last Wednesday’s special press conference at the Board’s headquarters in Abuja, explained that “Over 14,000 of those records were traced to the affected centres under the LAG server cluster,” adding that internal and external audits showed significant overlap in results, supporting the conclusion of systemic malfunction.
“As a result,” he added, “approximately 92 centres in the South-East and 65 centres in Lagos — totalling 157 centres — operated using outdated server logic that could not appropriately handle the new answer submission/marking structure. This affected an estimated 379,997 candidates, whose results were severely impacted due to system mismatches during answer validation.”
He added: “This review, conducted with thoroughness and transparency, signifies JAMB’s resolve to uphold the sanctity of its examination processes. Going forward, stronger deployment validation protocols and real-time monitoring mechanisms will be implemented to prevent such oversights.
“In summary, JAMB opened its systems to independent reviews to restore public confidence and ensure the reliability of the UTME for all stakeholders. And we hereby report, that this incident was neither a system failure nor administrative manipulation, but an outright human error…
“In simple terms, while 65 centres (206,610) were affected in Lagos Zone (comprising only Lagos), 92 centres (173,387) were affected in Owerri Zone, which includes the South East states.
“In clear terms, in the process of rectifying this issue, the technical personnel deployed by the service provider inadvertently failed to update some of the delivery services. Regrettably, this oversight went undetected prior to the release of the results.”
The Board’s remedy was to make the affected candidates resit the exam between May 16 and 19. At a point during the press briefing, the usually composed professor of Islamic Jurisprudence caved in to emotion, became bleary-eyed, tears welled up in his eyes and coursed down his cheeks.
The reactions to the resit option were tetchy. Some demurred and demanded the cancellation of the entire results. Some asked that Oloyede resign. Others wanted JAMB scrapped and that we should revert to the old system of making respective universities to admit candidates directly. Some egg-heads from the Southeast, in an invidious twist, read ethnic bias into the systemic error, insinuating that the whole thing might have been concocted to deliberately deny candidates from that region university admission, even when candidates from Lagos are also affected!
Some others said Oloyode was merely shedding crocodile tears. We quite understand the enormity of the trauma inflicted by the error, especially on the affected candidates, their parents and others who felt thoroughly let down.
Oloyede’s fate is, however, akin to the proverbial intermeshing grill of the fart and salt in the mouth. The fart is too putrid to swallow but the salt is difficult to spit out! Let us not, because of the present challenge, be blinded to the Registrar’s good side, so we will not be sloughing off the baby with the bathwater.
We believe those who are abreast of Oloyede’s antecedents will not resort to negative insinuations about him. The former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin has been a quintessence of transparency and integrity in public service. Since he took over as JAMB Registrar in 2016, he has established an ennobling record of financial probity, management efficiency and technological innovations that have placed the examination body in the global pedestal.
The first thing that had announced Oloyede’s tenure in JAMB as a drastic break from the past was when he returned a whopping N5 billion to the Federal Government’s coffers in August, 2017, a year after he resumed as Registrar. This singular action so shocked the Federal Executive Council(FEC) that it ordered the immediate probe of all the past JAMB’s heads before Oloyede.
The new Registrar’s exemplary action became more pronounced when compared with the paltry N50 million that was returned in the previous seven years, from 2010 to 2017!
A thoroughly shocked Minister of Finance then, Kemi Adeosun, was quoted to have said after the FEC’s meeting that ordered the investigation of JAMB’s past heads: “Now, they (JAMB) have not increased their charges; they have not increased their fees. The question that FEC and council members were asking was ‘where was this money before?’”
There is no stopping Oloyede. From then till now, nine years after, he has been remitting billions into the government’s coffers every year. In fact, by 2022, he had remitted N50billion into the government’s purse in six years.
Some of Professor Oloyede’s other bold imprints on the sand of JAMB include the introduction of the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), which automates the admission process; the institution of Equal Opportunity Group for the conduct of the Universal Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) for Blind Candidates; the expansion of the capacities of CBT centres for standardisation purposes; the introduction of E-Ticketing (for Complaints; the introduction of the Integrated Brochure and Syllabus System (IBASS) for prompt delivery of admissions requirements..
Others are the use of Biometric Authentication to confirm validity of registration, the introduction of E-slip printing; the introduction of management dashboard to monitor registration and admission exercise real time; the use of CCTV cameras in all CBT centres to monitor the examination and registration process real time; and exemplary funds management; as well as prudent and judicious use of JAMB’s financial resources.
Before the unfortunate error that that has tended to cast a slur on the system, Oloyede’s tenure had substantially restored the sanctity of UTME. And, as evident in all the admission exercises he had conducted so far except the current one that has been punctured by a systemic error, JAMB’s technology had considerably improved, with high level of transparency and advanced networking.
The scrapping of the traditional scratch card system for checking results is another bold initiative from Oloyede. And the drastic reduction in the application fees has been a considerable reprieve for sundry admission seekers, their parents and guardians.
The technical glitches, like we posited earlier, are bad enough but like a responsible and responsive public servant, the professor took total responsibility rather than manufacturing scapegoats like others in his shoes will do. We admonish that he be forgiven.
Certainly, we believe that the Board under the restless Registrar who is always innovating, will learn from this sordid experience to prevent a recrudescence.
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