Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Ishaq Oloyede, has revealed that he considered resigning over the technical glitch that affected the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
Speaking during a meeting with chief external examiners, civil society organisations and stakeholders in the tertiary education sector on Wednesday in Abuja, Oloyede said the incident shook him deeply, especially in the face of public backlash and accusations of bias.
“When it happened, my first reaction is to resign. But people advised me that the students will never forgive me because it will look like you abandoned them at such a time,” he said.
The 2025 UTME results, released on May 9, showed a poor performance, with over 78 per cent of candidates scoring below 200 out of the maximum 400 marks. This sparked outrage among parents and students, prompting JAMB to launch an internal probe.
On May 14, Oloyede disclosed that the responses of 379,997 candidates in 157 centres across Lagos and the south-east were affected by a major technical fault.
He traced the problem to a faulty server update from one of JAMB’s technical service providers, which failed to upload candidates’ answers during the first three days of the examination.
The error went undetected until after the results were made public.
In response, JAMB commenced a resit examination on May 16, which continued beyond May 19 for the affected candidates.
