The House of Representatives has resolved to investigate the technical error that led to the mass failure recorded in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
The resolution followed the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance sponsored by Hon. Adewale Adebayo (Osun State) during Thursday’s plenary.
A breakdown of the released UTME results showed that over 78% of candidates scored below 200 out of the maximum 400 points. The issue prompted an early internal review by JAMB, which revealed a major technical fault during the conduct of the exam.
JAMB Registrar Professor Ishaq Oloyede had, during a press conference on Wednesday in Abuja, disclosed that the responses of 379,997 candidates failed to upload correctly due to a faulty server update in the Lagos and South-East zones. The glitch occurred within the first three days of the examination and was traced to one of the board’s two technical service providers.
“The problem went undetected before the results were released,” Oloyede explained, taking full responsibility for the incident.
As a remedial measure, JAMB has announced that all affected candidates will retake the examination between May 16 and May 19, 2025.
Hon. Adebayo, while moving the motion, decried the hardship faced by many students and families who travelled long distances to their examination centres, only to suffer from the system error.
In his contribution, Hon. Sada Soli (Katsina) urged the House to commend the JAMB Registrar for acknowledging the fault and apologising to Nigerians, noting that Oloyede has displayed rare integrity and significantly increased the board’s revenue since taking office.
However, Speaker Tajudeen Abbas stated that the decision to commend the Registrar would be left to the committee that will investigate the matter.
Following deliberation, the House:
- Mandated its relevant committee to investigate the incident and report back.
- Urged JAMB to release the results of under-16 candidates, many of whom had been withheld.
- Called on the federal government to establish CBT centres in all 774 local government areas to ease access and reduce logistical burdens for candidates.
