The ACUF Initiative for Policy and Governance (ACUFIPOLGOV) has called for urgent reforms and candidate support measures following the confirmation of systemic technical errors that affected the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in multiple centres.
The group’s position comes after the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) released its 2025 UTME Technical Review Report, which revealed that the integrity of the exam results was compromised for over 379,000 candidates across 157 centres—mainly in Lagos and the South-East.
According to the report, a critical system update meant to support answer randomization and validation was mistakenly omitted from server clusters in the affected zones. This led to incorrect scoring that disadvantaged candidates through no fault of their own.
ACUFIPOLGOV commended JAMB for its swift acknowledgement of the error, public apology, and decision to allow a no-cost retake for affected candidates. However, the group stressed that the emotional and structural toll on the students must not be overlooked.
“This asymmetry, where affected candidates must retake a high-stakes exam while their peers move ahead, risks deepening educational inequities,” said Prof. Chiwuike Uba, Executive Director of ACUFIPOLGOV.
Key recommendations
To address the fallout and restore confidence in Nigeria’s examination system, ACUFIPOLGOV outlined several urgent reforms and safeguards:
Candidate support and fair admissions
- Welfare and preparation: Affected candidates should be granted ample time to prepare for the retake, with free access to revision materials and optional mental health support.
- Graduated cut-off marks: Institutions should consider lower cut-off scores for affected candidates and adopt a Contextual Admission Framework (CAF) to ensure fairness during admissions.
- Score recognition: JAMB is urged to consider using the higher of the original or retake scores to protect candidates who may have performed well despite the flawed system.
Strengthening systems and technology governance
- Server certification: Mandatory certification of server readiness and scoring logic should be enforced before any CBT session.
- Real-time monitoring: JAMB should introduce a centralized dashboard for real-time oversight of server performance across the country.
- Vendor regulation: Annual licensing audits and performance reviews should be mandatory for all CBT centre operators and software vendors.
Policy reform and accountability
- UTME redress policy: A formal contingency and redress framework should be introduced to guide future exam disruptions.
- Independent ombudsman: An autonomous exam ombudsman should be established to handle complaints and ensure candidate protection.
- Quota flexibility: Tertiary institutions should be permitted to adjust admission quotas temporarily to prevent statistical penalties for students from affected regions.
Promoting transparency
- Open data access: JAMB should publish anonymized centre-level performance data to enable independent validation.
- Stakeholder engagement: Ongoing, clear communication with candidates, parents, and institutions is essential to reinforce trust and clarity.
“This is a defining moment for education policy in Nigeria,” Prof. Uba stated. “The retake decision was commendable, but it must be accompanied by long-term reforms to guarantee that no candidate is disadvantaged by systemic failures.”
ACUFIPOLGOV reaffirmed its commitment to a fair and trustworthy national assessment system that prioritises accountability, equity, and reform.
