JUST IN: JAMB Makes Fresh Announcement On 2025 UTME

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that candidates who missed the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) will be permitted to retake the exam.

Naijaonpoint understands that JAMB registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed this during a meeting with chief external examiners, civil society organisations, and stakeholders from tertiary institutions on Wednesday in Abuja.

Recall that during the April 2025 UTME, candidates expressed concerns about their inability to attend the exam due to being assigned to distant centres.

The results of the 2025 UTME were published on May 9, following the conclusion of the exam on May 5.

Analysis revealed that over 78 per cent of candidates scored below 200 points out of a possible 400, leading to protests that questioned the integrity of the examination process.

JAMB conducted an early review and identified a significant ‘technical error.’ Oloyede indicated that the results of 379,997 candidates from 157 centres in the Lagos and south-east regions were impacted. A resit examination was conducted starting May 16 and continued beyond May 19.

At JAMB’s Abuja office, Oloyede reported that approximately 95 per cent of those scheduled for the resit UTME in Lagos and the south-east participated.

To accommodate the estimated 5.6 per cent of candidates who were unable to attend, JAMB is organising a special mop-up exercise.

Furthermore, Oloyede stated that all candidates who initially missed the examination will be allowed to retake it, irrespective of their reasons for absence.

“Normally, we hold one mop-up nationwide for those with one issue or another. This time, we are creating a new mop-up. Even those who missed the earlier exam due to absence we will extend this opportunity to them,” the registrar said.

In a conference held on May 14, Oloyede explained that the technical error during the 2025 UTME was due to problematic server updates, which resulted in the inability to upload candidate responses in the first three days of the exam.

The JAMB registrar noted that this issue, stemming from one of their technical service providers, went unnoticed until after the results were published.

Following this, on May 15, the House of Representatives decided to investigate the examination body regarding the technical mishap.

Additionally, on April 19, the south-east caucus in the House of Representatives called for the resignation of the JAMB registrar and requested the cancellation of the 2025 UTME to allow for a new examination to be held.