THE Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has appealed to candidates who sat for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) to remain calm, pledging to release their results soon.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, April 29, JAMB said the 2025 UTME results would be released as soon as all post-examination analyses and other procedures are completed.
The board did not provide a specific date but assured that the delay was due to standard post-examination processes, which include rigorous data checks, validation, and the screening of results to detect any irregularities.
“2025 UTME results to be released as soon as all post-examination analyses and other procedures are completed. Candidates are enjoined to be patient, please,” the exam body stated.
The 2025 UTME was conducted between April 24 and April 28, with over two million candidates who were registered participated in the nationwide exercise.
JAMB’s statement came on the heels of criticism and frustration expressed over widespread early morning schedules, long distance, late-night centre reassignments, long delays, technical problems and security risks faced by candidates across the country.
The ICIR reports that Nigerians faulted the exam body over the missing report of a candidate who was to write her exams at a centre far from her hometown.
The candidate was reported to have gone missing on her way from the Epe area of Lagos to Ajah to write the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
Meanwhile, in a follow-up post on Saturday, an X user who had first raised an alert about her disappearance disclosed that the missing candidate had returned home.
The incident, including students scheduled for exams at 6:30 am, led to public outcry.
The 2023 Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, while reacting to the incidents, in a statement, highlighted the risks faced by candidates, mostly teenagers, who were forced to travel early in the morning to take the exam.
“This situation sadly exposes a deeper, systemic failure: Nigeria simply does not have enough universities and exam centres to cater to its youth.
“Today, Nigeria has just about 200 universities for a population of over 200 million people. That alone means one university for every one million citizens, a very disturbing and staggering ratio that shows the dilapidated level of the country’s access to education,” he said.
Similarly, a report by BusinessDay on April 26 detailed several cases where students were either forced to wait for hours without writing their exams or had to travel unexpectedly to distant locations due to last-minute centre changes.
Other candidates reported system shutdowns mid-exam, missing questions, and CBT interface errors.
Usman Mustapha is a solution journalist with International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: umustapha@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M