By Atoyebi Nike
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that results for 379,000 candidates who participated in the rescheduled 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) will be released on Wednesday, May 21.
The candidates, mostly from Lagos and the South-East, were affected by what the Board described as “technical and human errors” during the original examination, prompting a nationwide outcry over the unusually high failure rate.
Out of 1.9 million candidates who sat the UTME, over 1.5 million scored below 200 marks out of a possible 400—fueling concerns about the exam’s credibility. In response, JAMB conducted an investigation and admitted to system failures in 157 centres.
Speaking on Monday, JAMB spokesperson, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, confirmed the resit results would be published midweek. “The results of the candidates who took the rescheduled exam will be released on Wednesday,” he said.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, had earlier accepted responsibility for the glitches, shedding tears at a public briefing. He described the disruptions as “sabotage,” affecting 206,610 candidates in Lagos and 173,387 in the South-East.
Data released by the Board show that only 0.63 per cent of candidates scored 300 and above, while over 75 per cent scored below 200.
Amid growing outrage, the South-East caucus in the House of Representatives on Monday demanded the cancellation of the 2025 UTME. In a statement signed by Hon. Iduma Igariwey (PDP, Ebonyi), the lawmakers cited institutional failure and poor coordination.
“Students in the South-East—many of whom are currently writing their WAEC exams—were given less than 48 hours’ notice to appear for the rescheduled UTME. In some cases, the resit clashed directly with WAEC papers,” the statement said.
The caucus urged the federal government to conduct a new exam after WAEC and NECO, and to suspend JAMB’s technical officers pending a full audit.
The lawmakers referenced Section 18(1) of the 1999 Constitution, which mandates equal and adequate educational opportunities for all. “For thousands of students across the South-East, the flawed conduct of the 2025 UTME has effectively denied them this right,” they concluded.
