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JAMB 2025 UTME Technical Review Report

On Tuesday, the 14th of May 2025, a high-level technical review session was convened at the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) headquarters in Abuja. The meeting, presided over by the esteemed Registrar, Professor Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede, was initiated in direct response to the mass outcry that followed the release of the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) results the previous Friday. The objective of this gathering was to unravel the root causes behind the unexpectedly poor candidate performance and to establish clear mitigative measures to restore confidence in the integrity of the UTME assessment process.

The meeting began promptly at 10:00 a.m. and was attended by a distinguished panel of stakeholders. Present were heads of key directorates within JAMB, and Lead Systems Analysts. Also in attendance were delegates from the CBT Centre Regulatory Committee, representatives from the Educare Technical Team, and lead engineers from the consortium of software vendors responsible for the examination engine infrastructure.

Discussions commenced with a comprehensive analysis of the existing system architecture. The panel reviewed the software stack powering the CBT engine, paying particular attention to how examination content was delivered to candidates. An important distinction was made between server-streamed and locally cached delivery methods.

The discussion further investigated the existence and efficacy of randomization mechanisms for both questions and answer options. This scrutiny was aimed at determining whether shuffling protocols were uniformly enforced, how answer permutations were managed, and if consistency of correct answer mapping was maintained across candidates following randomization.

Attention then shifted to the scoring and marking logic. This line of inquiry included assessing the capability of the system to reconstruct question-and-answer mappings and evaluate response accuracy with complete transparency. It was critical to determine if each candidate’s raw responses were stored, retrievable, and auditable.

The team also rigorously examined JAMB’s quality assurance and testing frameworks. This involved reviewing the load testing procedures previously employed, verifying the consistency of deployment builds across centres, and probing whether any last-minute hotfixes or patches were applied during or after the examination period. System logs, particularly incident and error records, were meticulously analyzed to identify any anomalies that could suggest failures in content delivery, timing accuracy, or candidate response capture.

Another focal point of the review was *the potential for human factor influence* . The panel sought clarity on whether any manual post-processing occurred during score collation or validation. The conversation concluded with an assessment of JAMB’s response readiness to Freedom of Information requests and its willingness to publish anonymized candidate-level result data as a measure to enhance public trust.

*One of the most critical discoveries* made during this session revolved around *three* major systemic changes introduced in the 2025 UTME. The first was a shift from the traditional *count-based analysis* to a more robust *source-based analysis* of results. In previous years, JAMB evaluated the integrity of examination sessions primarily by counting the number of responses submitted per session. If the majority of candidates in a session of 250 submitted a near-complete set of answers, the session was deemed valid. Any significant deviation led to disqualification of that centre’s results. However, in 2025, a more advanced model was adopted—one that focused on the actual source and logic of the answers provided, rather than just their quantity.

The second change involved *full-scale shuffling of both questions and answer options* . This ensured that even two candidates sitting in the same session would not receive identical permutations, thereby enhancing test security. The third change was *a series of systemic improvements aimed at optimizing performance and reducing lag* during exam sessions. This was a major policy change that saw the best and highest Obtained UTME score in 15 years. And this would have amounted to a great achievement by JAMB!

While these improvements were technologically sound in theory, a major operational flaw was uncovered during the implementation phase. The system patch necessary to support both shuffling and source-based validation had been fully deployed on the server cluster supporting the KAD (Kaduna) zone, but it was not applied to the LAG (Lagos) cluster, which services centres in Lagos and the South-East. This omission persisted across all sessions until the 17th session, after which the error was discovered and corrected.

As a result, approximately 92 centres in the South-East and 65 centres in Lagos—totalling 157 centres—operated using outdated server logic that could not appropriately handle the new answer submission/marking structure. This affected an estimated 379,997 candidates, whose results were severely impacted due to system mismatches during answer validation.

To verify the scale and accuracy of this issue, JAMB collaborated with the Educare Technical Team, which had gathered response data directly from over 18,000 candidates. After deduplication and filtering, about 15,000 authentic records were analyzed. Of these, more than 14,000 originated from the regions serviced by the unpatched LAG servers, confirming the technical review's findings. Comparative analyses between JAMB’s internal audits and third-party system evaluations revealed significant overlap, reinforcing the conclusion that the affected centres were indeed operating under impaired conditions.

In response to these findings, Professor Oloyede convened a press briefing at 3:00 p.m. on the same day. He formally acknowledged the oversight and issued a sincere apology to candidates and their families. He announced that all affected candidates would be given the opportunity to retake the examination at no additional cost. Furthermore, recognizing the potential scheduling conflict with ongoing SSCE examinations, JAMB had reached an agreement with the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to ensure seamless coordination of timetables.

Affected candidates were advised to reprint their examination slips by Friday, 17th May 2025, to confirm their revised test schedules. JAMB also released an official communique titled *MAN PROPOSES, GOD DISPOSES*, within which as a Profound, emotional Section: *“Appeal, Appreciation, and Apology,”* which reiterated its commitment to fairness, transparency, and continuous improvement.

This review, conducted with thoroughness and transparency, signifies JAMB's resolve to uphold the sanctity of its examination processes. Going forward, stronger deployment validation protocols and real-time monitoring mechanisms will be implemented to prevent such oversights.
In summary, JAMB opened its systems to independent reviews to restore public confidence and ensure the reliability of the UTME for all stakeholders. And we hereby report, that this incident was neither a system failure nor administrative manipulation, but an outright human error.

~
Educare Tech Team,
As submitted by
Engr James Nnanyelugo

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He was the senior prefect of his set despite his condition, now he’s an undergraduate of University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Daniel, I wish you Godspeed and never forget the lessons you learned while with us.

Examinations ongoing….
Everyone is entitled to quality education 👍🏾

😊

"An 87 Year Old College Student Named Rose
The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn’t already know.
I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned round to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me
with a smile that lit up her entire being.
She said, “Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I’m eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?”
I laughed and enthusiastically responded, “Of course you may!” and she gave me a giant squeeze.
“Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?” I asked.
She jokingly replied, “I’m here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids…”
“No seriously,” I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.
“I always dreamed of having a college education and now I’m getting one!” she told me.
After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake. We became instant friends. Every day for the
next three months, we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this “time machine”
as she shared her wisdom and experience with me.
Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.
At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I’ll never forget what she taught us. She was
introduced and stepped up to the podium.
As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor. Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, “I’m sorry I’m so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I’ll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell
you what I know.”
As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, “We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop
playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day.
You’ve got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die.
We have so many people walking around who are dead and don’t even know it!There is a huge difference between growing
older and growing up.
If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don’t do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old.
If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.
Anybody can grow older. That doesn’t take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change.
Have no regrets.
The elderly usually don’t have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those
with regrets.”
She concluded her speech by courageously singing “The Rose.”
She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives.
At the year’s end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago. One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep.
Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it’snever too late to be all you can possibly be .When you finish reading this, please send this peaceful word of advice to your friends and family, they’ll really enjoy it!
These words have been passed along in loving memory of ROSE.
REMEMBER, GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY. GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL.
We make a Living by what we get, We make a Life by what we give."

©️