The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board the body that conducts entrance examination into Nigerian Universities has admitted that errors affected candidates’ performance during this year’s 2025 Examination, held across the country.
Registrar of the board, Ishaq Oloyede, who said this during a media briefing in Abuja said that about 379,997 candidates would retake the examination.
This followed widespread complaints of technical glitches, unusually low scores, and alleged irregularities in the questions and the answers during the exercise.
It said this was responsible for the general low performance of the candidates.
JAMB released a statistical breakdown of the 2025 UTME, which revealed that over 1.5 million of the 1.95 million candidates who took the examination scored below 200.
In a post on its official X on May 5, it said that 1,955,069 candidates sat for the examination, and 1,534,654 candidates—representing 78.5 percent—scored below the 200 mark.
A breakdown of the results showed that only 4,756 candidates (0.24 percent) achieved scores of 320 and above, while 7,658 candidates (0.39 percent) scored between 300 and 319.
Just 12,414 candidates (0.63 percent) scored 300 and above.
For the 250-299 score range, 73,441 candidates (3.76 percent) were recorded, while a larger proportion, 334,560 candidates (17.11%), scored between 200 and 249.
The category with the highest number of candidates was the 160 to 199 range, with 983,187 candidates (50.29 percent).
In addition to the overall results, JAMB also disclosed that 40,247 underage candidates were allowed to participate in the examination due to their “exceptional abilities.”
However, only 467 of these candidates (1.16 percent) achieved scores that met the defined threshold for exceptional abilities.
