The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, revealed that he briefly considered resigning following a significant technical glitch that affected the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
Oloyede made this disclosure during a meeting on Wednesday in Abuja with chief external examiners, civil society organizations, and key stakeholders in the tertiary education sector.
He addressed the controversy surrounding the incident, including growing calls for his resignation.
The UTME disruption sparked criticism, with some alleging ethnic bias and deliberate sabotage.
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When it happened, my first reaction was 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, Oloyede said.
The results of the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) were released on May 9, revealing that over 78% of candidates scored below 200 out of a possible 400 points.
In response to widespread public concern, JAMB launched an internal investigation, which uncovered a major technical fault that had compromised the integrity of the results.
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It will be recalled that on May 14, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede disclosed that the scores of 379,997 candidates across 157 centres in Lagos and the South-East were affected by the error.
He explained that the problem stemmed from a faulty server update by one of JAMB’s technical service providers, which caused candidates’ responses to fail to upload during the first three days of the examination. The issue was only discovered after the results had already been released.
To address the situation, JAMB organized a resit examination that commenced on May 16 and extended beyond May 19.
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