JAMB Reschedules UTME for Affected 379,997 Candidates in Lagos, 5 Other States

• JAMB is set to reschedule UTME 2025 for 379,997 candidates in Lagos and the South East due to what the board described as "sabotage"
• Lagos had 206,610 candidates affected across 65 centres, while 173,387 candidates in 92 centres in five states in the South East were also impacted
• The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, confirmed this in a terse statement and shared further details on Wednesday

Legit.ng journalist Esther Odili has over two years of experience covering political parties and movements.

FCT, Abuja - On Wednesday, May 14, the 379,997 candidates in the five states of the South East and Lagos will be rescheduled for another Unified Tertiary and Matriculation Examination (UTME).

JAMB to notify affected candidates of new exam dates

JAMB registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, made this known in a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday.

“206,610 in 65 centres were affected in Lagos and 92 centres in Owerri zone comprising of 173,387 candidates in the five states of the South East were affected,” he said.

As reported by The Punch, Oloyede, who took responsibility for what he described as a “sabotage” of the 2025 UTME, said the affected candidates would start getting text messages from the board starting Thursday, May 15.

"As such, all the affected candidates will be contacted to reprint their examination slips towards retaking their examinations starting from 16th May, 2025," Oloyede said.

JAMB results error: Educare tech team shares insights

Meanwhile, the Educare tech team has shared its findings after participating in a high-level session held at the JAMB headquarters in Abuja. The team headed by Engr James Nnanyelugo revealed that systemic upgrades intended to improve fairness and performance in the 2025 UTME were not uniformly deployed across all test centres.

While new features, such as source-based answer validation, randomised question delivery, and system optimisations, were fully implemented in the Kaduna (KAD) server cluster, the Lagos (LAG) cluster, servicing centres in Lagos and the southeast, ran on outdated server configurations.

“This operational gap impacted 157 centres and approximately 379,997 candidates,” the Educare Tech Team said, adding that the issue was traced to a human error during deployment, not a system failure or administrative manipulation.

Data gathered from over 18,000 candidates corroborated the findings, prompting JAMB to acknowledge the error and announce remedial action.

JAMB Registrar Oloyede, in a press briefing following the review, issued a formal apology and confirmed that all affected candidates would be allowed to retake the exam at no additional cost. The board also said it had reached an agreement with the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to avoid clashes with ongoing SSCE exams.

Candidates are expected to reprint their examination slips by Friday, May 17, to confirm their revised schedules.

The Educare tech team emphasised that the incident highlighted the need for stronger deployment validation and real-time monitoring, urging JAMB to enhance its quality assurance frameworks moving forward.

Legit.ng reported that JAMB released the results of the 2025 UTME exercise, which was conducted earlier this year.

However, JAMB admitted to errors in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

JAMB registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, admitted that the errors affected the performance of students during the 2025 UTME.

Oloyede, on Wednesday, May 14, 2025, broke down in tears as he apologised for the errors and trauma caused to the candidates.

JAMB: States with highest UTME malpractice cases

Earlier, JAMB disclosed that Anambra and Lagos recorded the most incidents of malpractice during the recently concluded 2025 UTME.

Speaking at a media briefing, JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, revealed that 80 individuals have so far been apprehended for various exam-related offences across the country.

Anambra led the list with 14 suspects, closely followed by Lagos with nine.

Read more about JAMB here:

• JAMB 2025: 16-year-old Olamide Aderibigbe shines in UTME with 336 score, breakdown of result trends
• JAMB 2025: 19-year-old kills self over ‘low UTME score’, reportedly gets admission 30 minutes after death
• JAMB results: What next for UTME candidates? 5 steps that guarantee admission, by Folaranmi A.
• UTME 2025 low results: Student reacts as JAMB finally addresses complaints, video trends

JAMB invites man to review of 2025 UTME

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that JAMB formally invited an education stakeholder, the CEO of Educare, to a review of the 2025 UTME.

The invite comes days after the Educare boss championed the outcry of some parents and their wards who had low scores in the UTME.

The education stakeholder posted the letter he received from JAMB and promised to share his findings with the public.

Legit.ng's head of politics and current affairs desk, Nurudeen Lawal, contributed insights from the Educare tech team on the main reason for the UTME 2025 results error to this report.

Proofreading by Kola Muhammed, copy editor at Legit.ng.

Source: Legit.ng