It’s not often that thousands of students are told to retake a national examination. It happened after the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) left many scratching their heads, not just over tough questions.
This year’s UTME became a national talking point after it brought confusion, delays, and technical mishaps.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is in damage control mode. After a press briefing and a few tears, about 379,997 candidates are set to rewrite the exam between May 16 and 18. Here are five key issues they’re scrambling to fix, and what this means for the future of the exam.
1. Missing questions, floating answers
Imagine logging into your UTME and seeing answer options… with no questions. That’s what happened to some candidates this year. “There were about 15 of them,” one candidate recounted in a recent interview. “The supervisor told us to randomly pick answers.”
Not exactly the kind of academic rigour expected from a national exam body. JAMB says it’s investigating what caused these ghost questions to appear and disappear.
2. A 7:30 exam that starts at 8:30 PM?
If you thought delays at the airport were bad, try waiting over 12 hours for an exam. Candidates who were scheduled to write their papers early in the morning said they didn’t get started until after nightfall. “We ended up writing it past 8 p.m., or a few minutes to 9 p.m.,” said one 18-year-old who spoke to Vanguard.
JAMB has cited technical issues and poor logistics at some centers. But for candidates, it felt like being punished twice—first with uncertainty, then with exhaustion.
3. The biometric breakdown
Technology is meant to make things easier, unless it is not working. Over 2,000 candidates were unable to take the exam due to fingerprint failures, a verification method JAMB introduced to curb impersonation and fraud. But this year, the tech became the traitor.
While biometric verification is still a key part of the UTME process, the board says improvements are underway to avoid this kind of large-scale failure in the future.
4. The rise of “WhatsApp runs”
In 2025, examination malpractice came with a digital twist. JAMB says it uncovered 244 cases of candidates using WhatsApp groups to buy and sell access to supposed “expo” materials.
The board has also flagged several instances of identity fraud, where people allegedly tried to take the exam on behalf of others. All flagged results have been withheld, and legal action is reportedly on the table. (Businessday)