If we randomly picked 10 students who wrote the 2025 UTME, about 8 out of them would have scored less than 200. More factually, out of 1.96 million who registered and sat for the exam, 1.53 million candidates had less than 200 out of 400 obtainable marks. You are right to be alarmed at this statistic! That is why when the statistical breakdown of the 2025 UTME results was released, it was all everyone would talk about. It is not strange; it is very Nigerian to identify, discuss and lament a problem but also not attempt to solve it.
The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) is an exam organised by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in 1978. But before then, how was admission into tertiary institutions conducted? Universities would individually conduct their own entrance examinations. They could also set any criteria for admission, as they saw fit. This meant that aspiring students had to buy several forms, apply to several schools and write different entrance examinations before they could gain admission. Some would gain admission into multiple universities while others wouldn’t get into any. JAMB came and solved this problem. Through the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), the records and admissions of university students were also closely monitored. The existence of JAMB also meant that some level of fairness and transparency was maintained in the admission process into tertiary institutions. The common man who was not as financially or ‘connection-ically’ bountiful as his peers suddenly had a fair shot at tertiary education. JAMB was the right innovation to solve the tertiary admission problem, which is why suggesting that it should be cancelled would result in even more dire consequences.
The problem is not the UTME, it is how the exam is conducted. It is the mediocrity—that is Nigerian—that has become the watchword of JAMB. In 1997, 95000 results were annulled. In 2016, candidates reported seeing multiple results for the same exam. One would think that after years of conducting this exam, the same issues would have stopped repeating themselves. Perhaps, it is not strange for issues to arise, but it is definitely not normal not to solve such issues or put in place measures to prevent the same issues from recurring for multiple years.
When an aspirant picks up the form to register for the UTME, they fill it out with their details. In JAMB’s graciousness, they include a section for aspirants to fill in their desired examination city. For candidates who are lucky to register early for the examination, they get posted to centres within their city of choice. Those who register late get a shorter length of the stick and are posted to any centre, within or outside their city of choice. They do not get to pick a second-choice city; they just have to deal with it as it comes. They also won’t get their examination slip till less than one month before the exam.
While the exam venues were not so common an issue this year, the age-old concerns were raised. Exams were said to be scheduled for as early as 6:00 am. This meant that the exam takers had to leave their homes earlier than 6 am to arrive at the exam centres by 6:00 am. Upon further clarification, it was revealed that the exam itself doesn’t start till 8:00 am; JAMB simply encouraged the exam takers to arrive at the venues by 6:00 am. This distinction does not make it any less bizarre that exam takers have to travel that early, knowing the security concerns in Nigeria.
On the 27th of April, Punch Newspapers reported glitches in an exam centre in Ibadan. Candidates complained of incomplete sets of questions for English Language and incomplete questions for Physics, which meant that students did not have full information to attempt some questions, among others. These complaints were not limited to this centre in Ibadan. Aside from these, the peculiar technical issues persist, for example, loss of power on the device being used for the examination, etc.
On the 9th of May, the 2025 UTME results were released. Another issue not peculiar to this year alone is that many students claimed that the results did not reflect their true abilities. Alex Onyia, the founder of Educare, an organisation that prepares candidates for UTME, reported several students who did much better in the exam the previous year but then failed woefully this year. One could have attributed this to a lack of proper preparation if it were just a few students with this complaint, but the high number of complaints means that JAMB either made a mistake with the results of this year or the year before. While some people who had immense faith in the exam takers believed them when they insisted that the results did not reflect the work they had put in and their abilities, others doubled down on the “lazy youths” narrative. After all, it is easier to blame the students. This is why the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, claimed that the failure was because of JAMB’s advanced anti-examination malpractice technologies.
Alex Onyia was one of the few who believed in the abilities of the exam takers and stood up for them. Over 11,000 students shared their feedback and complaints with him. He also vocally shared the stories of different candidates whose results were not reflective of their abilities. One such case is that of Ofili Onyekachi Emmanuel, who scored 314 in the 2024 UTME but scored 167 in this year’s exam after supposedly studying harder than he did the year before. Mr Alex Onyia was later invited to the review held by JAMB.
The review revealed that three distinct systemic changes were introduced for the 2025 UTME. These were technological improvements that were supposed to improve the quality of the exam. However, the implementation phase was not smooth. The system patch that was supposed to support the new updates was deployed to the KAD cluster but not to the LAG cluster, supporting Lagos and south-east centres. The omission went unnoticed till the 17th session, after which it was fixed.
JAMB did not announce this error as soon as it happened, when results were released or when the public lamented the statistical failure of the 2025 UTME. The Board had to be called out and petitioned for them to own up to an error that they knew about during the exams. It would then not be wrong to assume that this wasn’t the first time an error of this magnitude had happened. It was just the first time that someone would take the matter up and actually act on it.
About 400,000 students were affected by this glitch. JAMB owned up to this mistake on live TV and through a statement on their official X account. The affected students were asked to resit the exam in less than a week, an exam they had written weeks ago and would normally take months to prepare for. While a remark might have been the best solution to the issue, JAMB, for reasons not revealed, settled for a resit. The resit exams were said to have clashed with WAEC examinations.
While this mistake is of great magnitude and has severe effects, it is not the main issue at hand. JAMB should be of better conduct. There should be routine audits and reviews with independent bodies. This will help to improve the transparency of the exam. But the issue runs deeper, it is a systematic and structural one. We have a decade-long history of more than 50% of students who take the JAMB exams scoring below 200 out of 400.
Teaching as a profession in Nigeria has slowly turned into the profession that you ‘settle’ for. Teachers, especially private school teachers, earn a meagre salary compared to the amount of work they put in. This is without considering the possibility that some of them never wanted to be teachers. Students who cannot gain admission into universities resort to colleges of education because the cutoff mark is much lower. Students who do not meet their department’s requirements are transferred to the Faculty of Education at the university. Additionally, corpers are made to teach subjects often unrelated to their fields of study during their national youth service. When the system is such as this, it wouldn’t be surprising to produce teachers who are not skilled enough for their jobs or are simply uninterested. This is a structural problem that would take years to reform. When this foundational problem is solved, the exam and the conditions surrounding admission into tertiary institutions will significantly improve.
Furthermore, we cannot overlook the evil that the “school na scam” movement has wrought on the educational system. We now have teenagers more interested in making money than going to school. We have teenagers who prefer to cheat during exams rather than study their coursework. Aside from students who were affected by the technical glitch, we still have too many students who failed to score above 200 marks. This can only mean one thing—danger for the future of Nigeria. If things go on like this, this country, already plagued by severe brain drain, will have few competent professionals left in the future.
The future hinges on today’s youth. The UTME is unarguably an exam that shapes the lives of students and can ultimately determine their perception of education and their contributions to society. Given its importance, it is imperative that we ensure the standardisation, fairness and integrity of this exam, and also improve the standard of education obtainable in our high schools. By doing so, we can foster a more equitable and merit-based education system that allows students to reach their full potential.
Afeezah Wojuade