Stakeholders divided over Oloyede’s future amid glitches
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that 1.3 million candidates (representing 70.7 per cent), scored less than 200 points in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
Following widespread technical glitches in the UTME, the fate of the JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, has continued to spark heated debate among stakeholders
The examination body explained that 117,373 candidates (6.08 per cent) scored above 250 points, even as 565,988 (29.3 per cent) polled above 200 points.
JAMB also said 17,025 (0.88 per cent) of the 1.9 million candidates who sat this year’s UTME scored above 300.
In a statement realised yesterday by JAMB’s Public Communication Advisor, Dr Fabian Benjamin, the examination body noted that only a handful scored up to 217 in the cancelled exercise.
Releasing the rescheduled UTME results yesterday after the initial server glitches that marred the exercise in six states of the Federation, Dr Benjamin said there were no high scorers in the cancelled sessions of the affected states.
He said: “The misleading questions posed by certain individuals regarding candidates who allegedly scored highly in the cancelled sessions who might desire to retain their previous results are totally unfounded as only a handful scored up to 217 in the affected sessions, while 99 per cent scored below 200 marks, indicating that there were no high scorers in the cancelled sessions of the affected six states.”
With over 3,000 candidates identified as accomplices or beneficiaries of examination fraud, the board disclosed that some culprits were arrested.
“While this situation is unfortunate, it has also revealed numerous alarming practices perpetrated by candidates, certain proprietors of schools/Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres, which exacerbated examination irregularities,” the board explained in the statement.”
The release of the results came after JAMB convened a meeting of its Chief External Examiners (CEE) in all states of the federation, to consider the results.
It further explained that after consideration of the report of the resit examination, and extensive deliberations thereon, a sub-committee chaired by the Vice-Chancellor of National Open University, Prof Olufemi Peters, who is also the CEE of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), was constituted to confirm that the results were in order.
After reviewing the exercise, the CEEs reviewed the exercise and directed that an expert in psychometrics, Prof Boniface Nworgu, be invited to analyse and endorse the
THE Oloyede controversy took centre stage at The Encounter 2025 symposium, at the weekend, with the theme ‘Deploying ICT Towards Educational Development’.
The event gathered educationists, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) experts, parents and media professionals to address issues in Nigeria’s education sector.
A major point of contention was whether Oloyede should continue in his role after technical failures disrupted the UTME for 379,997 candidates across 157 centres, with most incidents recorded in Lagos and the South-East.
Calls for his resignation were led by educationist, Dr Peter Oguduro, and a coalition of concerned parents, who blamed the JAMB leadership for the exam malfunctions.
They argued that the failures compromised the integrity and accessibility of the national assessment.
However, other participants defended the registrar, urging a broader evaluation of his tenure.
