Peter Obi has praised Ishaq Oloyede, the registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), for openly acknowledging the glitches in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) but emphasized the need to avoid such errors in the future.
Oloyede, in a rare display of emotion, admitted that certain mistakes had impacted candidates’ performance during the examination conducted earlier this year.
Obi, the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election, commended Oloyede’s transparency while urging that proactive measures be taken to prevent a recurrence.
“His open admission of fault and the expression of deep remorse stand out as a rare but commendable display of accountability in our public institutions,” Obi wrote on his X handle on Thursday about the entrance examination into tertiary schools, saying it “raises a very concerning issue on glitches and the grave havoc it’s creating in our country, even in critical institutions like JAMB”.
“There must be no room for further glitches – not in JAMB, not in any arm of government. The cost of repeated failure is simply too high,” he said.
‘Emotional, Psychological Toll’
Let’s not make Glitches Become a National Crisis
I recently watched the heartfelt press conference delivered by the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, in which he acknowledged that technical glitches had affected the recently released JAMB results, impacting 379,997…
— Peter Obi (@PeterObi) May 15, 2025
The former Anambra State governor said JAMB’s willingness to own up to its shortcomings is worthy of recognition, but “the incident has brought to light a far more troubling reality: the persistent fragility of our institutional systems”.
“The emotional and psychological toll on students, and even parents, some of whom have reportedly suffered severe trauma, and in heartbreaking cases, even death, serves as a reminder of what is at stake,” the LP chieftain said.
“The integrity of examination processes and the reliability of public institutions are not optional; they are foundational to any nation’s progress.”
He urged JAMB and similar institutions to “adopt comprehensive quality assurance frameworks,” emphasizing the importance of measures such as “rigorous testing and constant auditing of technical infrastructure” and advocating for “transparent communication with candidates and stakeholders” as critical steps to restore public trust.
During a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday, the JAMB registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, stated, “It is our culture to admit errors because, despite our best efforts, we are human; we are not perfect.”
Oloyede revealed that approximately 379,997 candidates from the recently concluded 2025 UTME would be given the opportunity to retake the examination.
This announcement followed widespread outrage over technical issues, unusually low scores, and allegations of irregularities in the examination questions and answers. A subsequent review by JAMB confirmed that a technical glitch had affected 157 out of the 887 examination centers.
Further analysis of the 2025 UTME results showed that over 1.5 million of the 1.95 million candidates scored below 200, sparking public concern and calls for accountability.