Reps Begin Probe Of Mass UTME Failure

The House of Representatives has resolved to investigate the technical error that led to the mass failure of the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB).

This followed the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance sponsored by Hon. Adewale Adebayo from Osun state at plenary on Thursday.

A breakdown of the recently released UTME results showed that more than 78 per cent of candidates scored less than 200 out of the 400 maximum obtainable points.

However, JAMB undertook an early review and uncovered a significant technical error.
The JAMB registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, held a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday and said the results of 379,997 candidates were affected.

He said the board discovered discrepancies linked to faulty server updates in its Lagos and south-east zones, which led to the failure to upload candidates’ responses during the first three days of the examination.

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Oloyede, who took responsibility, said the problem, which was caused by one of the two technical service providers for the exercise, went undetected before the results were released.

He said the affected candidates will now have the opportunity to retake the examination between May 16 and May 19, 2025.

Moving the motion on the matter during plenary, Hon. Adebayo said many Nigerians had suffered losses while travelling long distances to their UTME examination centres.

In his contribution to the motion, Sada Soli, a lawmaker from Katsina, urged the House to commend the JAMB registrar for admitting the technical error and apologising to Nigerians.

He said the JAMB boss has demonstrated integrity and increased the board’s revenue since he was appointed into office.

But Speaker Tajudeen Abbas said the committee investigating would decide whether or not to commend the JAMB registrar.

The House adopted the motion, asking the federal government to establish CTB centres across the country’s 774 local government areas and urging JAMB to release the results of under-16 candidates.