A few hours after the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) released results for the just-concluded Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) on Friday, a teacher in Lagos, Oluwaleke Animashaun’s phone rang.
It was a call from one of his students. He thought she had called to share some good news, but he was shattered a few seconds into the call.
His student’s score was 42 marks shy of the 200 UTME cut off, lower than they had both expected.
He told The Guardian that she is a brilliant student who ought to have had a score higher than 158.
“She is a brilliant candidate. I am very sure she ought to have gotten up to 300. I can put my salary on ground that she ought to have scored higher than that,” Animashaun said
Animashaun suspects there was an error in the grading or a system glitch.
#ThisIsNotMyResult – More candidates speak out
That same day, The Guardian observed posts from numerous accounts on X, protesting poor UTME scores.
The complaints were the same — they believed they ought to have higher scores.
Many of these candidates who sat for the exam have pointed fingers at the board for tampering with their scores and are calling for a review.
Some of them had written the UTME the previous year and had excellent scores, but scored poorly in the 2025 UTME despite having sleepless nights while preparing for the exam.
Babatunde Peace Ifeoluwa is one of such candidates.
He had written UTME in 2024 and scored 278, but scored 169 in the 2025 UTME.
His elder sister took to X on Friday to protest this and request a review of her brother’s result.
“Dear @JAMBHQ, My brother’s JAMB result just came out, and it is not adding up. This is someone with a content record of academic excellence,” she lamented.
“We cannot accept this result. Too much effort and sleepless nights went into preparation. This is so unfair. Please review it.”
Ifeoluwa’s elder sister also cited the case of his friend who has a similar experience.
He scored 277 in the 2024 UTME, but could not secure admission in the University of Lagos (UNILAG), had to resit the exam in 2025 and scored 177.
“Ridwan had 277 last year but for some reasons did not meet UNILAG cut off last year. They both studied hard nd decided to try again this year, and this happens?” she questioned.
“We need answers. You are pushing this children to the edge. So unfair!”
A pattern
From posts on X, The Guardian observed that some of those who sat for the exams between the 24th and 28th of April had similar experiences and low scores.
Animashaun told The Guardian that his student wrote her exam on April 28.
The Guardian saw numerous posts on X about people who sat for the exams on those days lamenting the same issue, and many are left wondering what happened on those days.
One candidate who wrote the exam on April 26 said his result does not reflect the efforts he put into preparation.
“I wrote the 2025 UTME on April 26, and my result of 167 does not reflect my performance. Many questions did not load properly, causing me to lose time,” he lamented.
“This error is unfair and needs to be reviewed. Please investigate!”
Another candidate who sat for the exam on April 26 said many of them who sat for the exams that day saw about 15 questions in English Language with options, and no questions.
The Guardian also learnt that some of them had incomplete questions and blank options.
Mass failure
Days before the results were released, JAMB noted that there was mass failure in the 2025 UTME.
More than 1.5 million out of the 1.9 million candidates scored below 200, which is half the obtainable 400 mark.
The Chief Executive Officer of Educare, a school management platform, Alex Onyia, who has been baffled by the laments from various candidates, has decided to take legal steps against the board.
Onyia is currently compiling a list of candidates with similar complaints.
“We are taking legal steps by Monday at the Federal High Court to compel JAMB to release the marking sheet and scoring details so students can verify the accuracy of their results,” he wrote in a post on X.
He is joining other applicants to request a release of their mark sheet and a thorough investigation into the issue.
At about 8 am on Monday, Onyia revealed that 11,467 candidates have filed complaints.
JAMB reacts
In a statement signed by the board’s spokesperson, Fabian Benjamin, JAMB noted that it is scrutinising these complaints in detail to identify and rectify potential technical issues.
The spokesperson described the complaints as unusual, adding that it is concerning.
“If it is determined that there were indeed glitches, we will implement appropriate remedial measures promptly, as we do in the case of the examinations themselves,” Benjamin noted.
