The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, has disclosed that he briefly contemplated resigning after a major technical error that disrupted the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
Oloyede stated this at a meeting with chief external examiners, civil society organisations and stakeholders in the tertiary education sector on Wednesday in Abuja.
The JAMB boss addressed the controversy and the calls for his resignation.
Some critics had alleged ethnic bias and sabotage about the UTME mishap.
“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.
News360 Info reports that the results of the 2025 UTME were released on May 9, with a performance breakdown showing that over 78% of candidates scored below 200 out of the maximum 400 points.
Responding to the widespread public outcry, the Board launched an internal review and discovered a significant technical fault that had compromised the integrity of the results.
Recall that Oloyede, on May 14, revealed that the results of 379,997 candidates across 157 centres in Lagos and the south-east were impacted by the error.
According to him, a flawed server update from one of JAMB’s technical service providers led to the failure to upload candidates’ responses during the first three days of the exam. The issue went unnoticed until after the results were published.
