The mass failure of candidates in the recently held 2025/26 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), and the disturbing delays in release of the results may have less to do with lack of academic brilliance in candidates or the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board JAMB’s claimed conquest of examination malpractice as being touted in some quarters.
My SS3 daughter was well prepared for the exam, both in book work and Computer-Based Test (CBT) use. She got 317 in the mock UTME, said to have been administered by the same examination body on selected students of some schools just two weeks before the real deal. But when I asked how she felt about the exam proper, she said “Daddy, I am not so sure o”.
She was way more confident after the mock UTME, so I sought to know why. Her answer was that after answering the last question well ahead of time, she found herself unable to go back and review as the exam portal had closed unexpectedly. And that when she sought help from the invigilator at her center, she was told that the system had automatically submitted her script and logged her out. That she should have left some questions unanswered to be able to go back. So she couldn’t review, correct any errors and submit on her own volition, in her own or regulation time, and/or upon satisfaction with her answers as she was supposed to be able to. She left the center dejected.
That shouldn’t have been the case. Standardized CBT must give candidates options to either submit or go back to review before submitting. No CBT, properly so-called, should close itself without the candidate’s input to the effect. Besides, that’s not the advertised format for which she and other candidates prepared.
The school principal’s explanation was that all candidates at the particular center had the same problem.
Part of the causes of the seemingly general sub-par performance, therefore, is, glitches in the CBT system, at least according to my findings.
It’s not enough to ascribe the problem to the curb of malpractice or blame students for lack of seriousness. And lack of familiarity or insufficient knowledge of CBT use as being claimed by some commentators is not the only problem either.
CBTs have matured over time and become near commonplace. They are no longer the rocket science or arcane dark arts they were thought to be in times past. Even kids in primary school now practice and take CBTs. I invested resources for my daughter to be prepared well ahead. She also had access to a CBT lab in her school. She lacked for nothing and couldn’t have been more serious, studied harder, practiced more or prepared better.
The school’s experience, according to the principal, was that their students usually repeat or improve on their mock UTME scores in the real test with the revision, corrections and additional coaching they provided in the interval between mock and the actual JAMB CBT. So I’d expected her to return 300 or above in the real exam, given her 317 score in the mock test.
The results started coming out, then stopped. Unconfirmed reports had it that JAMB stopped or suspended the release on account of the general poor performance. Reports in the dailies yesterday revealed that “39,834 results remain unreleased”, of which 1,426 results are said to be “under scrutiny and processing“. Today, I read on the school WhatsApp group that results are out but a problem with Airtel network is the cause of delay.
Suffice to say, we don’t know my daughter’s UTME 2025 score yet.
The only thing I’m certain of is that her problem, if she ends up having one, from her account, corroborated by the school and affected others, came from CBT that instead of presenting a ‘submit’ or ‘revise’ button after the last question or staying on the last question page with ‘back’ button to reverse navigate for revision and corrections, automatically submitted without the students’ consent or intervention.
What actually happened?
The response credited to Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, that the results reflect the effectiveness of government efforts to curb exam malpractice is unhelpful, to say the least, especially for parents who invested into preparing their wards adequately to pass fair and square; and for the psyches of promising students that prepared well but were frustrated, ostensibly, by system failure. If I were the minister, I would not celebrate mass failure as evident of success in my effort against exam malpractice. I will be more worried that 78% of students failed, in a critical area of governance under my watch, education.
That 78% of 1,957,000 candidates that sat for the exam scored less than 200 of 400 obtainable points is definitely worrisome. It raises questions: Is 78% failure rate in an exam an indictment of the students, the examiner, JAMB, or the wider education system? How can ‘unserious students’ pass a mock test in flying colors but fail the real exam woefully just two weeks later, and both are administered by the same entity? Can there be a disconnect somewhere? And is peremptory, omnibus dismissal of our children as “unserious” a silver bullet, or sufficient explanation for perennially recurrent UTME mass failure debacle? And should JAMB or government lift no finger to critically interrogate other possible causes, especially those oft-repeated by many affected candidates, schools and parents?
Anyhow, the problem is not unsolvable in an ideal situation or if JAMB is sincere and serious about getting to the root of the mass failure issue and doing the right thing. The best designed microprocessor-controlled systems malfunction and throw up unforeseen issues, generally described as bugs. A CBT has application, system, audit, security, etc logs that can reveal errors, exceptions or intrusions when queried from PCs and servers at the affected centers or from JAMB’s backend. System routines, processes and procedures exist to analyze, trace, identify or isolate and remediate such system-related problems.
If the affected students’ and schools’ claim is proven correct, a quick resit can fix the issue, so we can all move on with our lives. If invalid, everyone interested can know and rest. My daughter and I and other affected people can get closure. No one needs be left hanging or guessing.
CBT system error in some centres is no damning crime by JAMB or its officials. It only highlights gaps and points to areas for improvement. Admission of same is not weakness either, or failure. The real crime and failure will be in deflection with tired cliches, evading the issue or letting it slide, doing nothing and thereby potentially blighting the future of affected talented but hapless children, no matter the number.
As it churns out data on various aspects of its 2025 examination, JAMB should also investigate reports of glitches at certain CBT centers. Those complaining should not be ignored or dismissed out of hand.
My daughter was definitely not hoping on exam malpractice. She is not dull in any way, manner or form. And she is not unserious. She is one of the leading students in her school, hence her selection for mock UTME, which she aced.
It was not unseriousness, inadequate preparation or instruction comprehension for her. I find such suggestion glib and unacceptable.
This piece is however not all about my daughter. I am hopeful that she will pass, and well too, enough to be able to gain admission into her choice school and for her chosen course, regardless of the CBT glitch and/or the mass failure as she, the family and school sacrificed so much over the last year to prepare and ready her for the exam. I have the same hope for other candidates that are also not unserious or dull, and that also genuinely prepared, and are also impacted by failed CBT sessions.
No matter how well it thinks it has done, JAMB should also muster courage to confront errors in its system and identified problem centers, review and amend, including by apologizing to affected students and offering opportunity to resit the test. Furthermore, the examinations board should reevaluate, improve and optimize its electronic testing infrastructure to mitigate risk and avert future recurrence.
Anything else will be negligence and dereliction of duty to our current and future generations, born of the attitude of nonchalance to the plight of the people, and the mentality of impunity that afflicts some of our public servants.
JAMB has opportunity to perfect its act, and transparently reassure candidates, schools and parents that it is still the matriculation board of excellence it has always been known as, and that it has improved and will continue to improve. It should, and promptly too.
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