REWIND: In 1997, JAMB nullified 95,000 UME results — but for malpractice
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has been at the receiving end of public criticism over the mass failure recorded in the 2025 run of its Unified Tertiary Matriculation Exam (UTME).
The results from JAMB’s 2025 UTME were released on May 9.
An analysis revealed that more than 78 per cent of candidates scored less than 200 points out of the 400 maximum obtainable points.
This sparked protests from parents and students who raised concerns over the integrity of the examination process.
JAMB reviewed the results and admitted to a technical error that compromised the integrity of the exam in 157 centres nationwide.
A teary-eyed Ishaq Oloyede apologised to the affected candidates and Nigerians in a televised conference on May 14.
The JAMB registrar said the error, caused by one of its service providers, distorted the results of nearly 380,000 candidates.
Lagos and south-east states were affected.
But 2025 is not the first time JAMB would be forced to annul UTME results at scale and conduct resit exams for candidates.
On September 15, 1997, JAMB had annulled 95,000 University Matriculation Examination (UME) results while releasing 376,000.
Bello Salim, then the head of JAMB, said the results were cancelled after the candidates were involved in “massive widespread cheating”.
He said the cheating involved impersonation and swapping of scripts.
A PM News clipping, obtained from Archive Nigeria, indicates that candidates in Lagos were the most affected.
A year later, during JAMB’s celebration of its 20th anniversary, there were reports of some Nigerians agitating for its scrapping.
UTME 2025 ERROR DUE TO ANTI-MALPRACTICE MEASURE, SAYS JAMB
JAMB has scheduled a resit for all candidates affected by its 2025 UTME technical error.
The resit exam is to hold between May 16 and May 19, 2025.
The board said candidates will be contacted directly through SMS, email, and phone calls to reprint their slips.
During Oloyede’s May 14 speech, the registrar said JAMB had tried to curb malpractice by implementing shuffled answer options.
This measure, he said, was introduced following a review of 2025 mock UTME performances.
He said despite thorough testing and simulations, a software patch meant to update the system was improperly applied in some centres.
This, Oloyede said, caused result distortions that affected 157 centres across Lagos and the south-east.
On May 9, Oloyede said malpractice cases are declining, with 96 results withheld for general infractions in 2025 compared to 123 in 2024.
He said while traditional impersonation and cheating persist, new forms of malpractice have emerged.
These include biometric fraud (combining fingerprints of candidates and impersonation), use of duplicate NINs to register multiple times, malpractice syndicates operating on instant messaging apps, and camera smuggling into exam halls to leak questions.
In a follow-up March 11 bulletin publication, JAMB added that 244 2025 UTME results were withheld for WhatsApp-related exam fraud.
