Amudipe Opeyemi Marcus
In the aftermath of the mass failures recorded in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), public outrage has surged across Nigeria. But much of the outrage—especially from the South-East—is being channeled in a dangerously misdirected way. The claim gaining momentum is that the federal government, through the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has intentionally orchestrated a plot to marginalize students from the South-East and Lagos. This, they say, explains the unusually high number of invalidated and low-scoring candidates in these regions.
While such suspicions reflect Nigeria’s deeply fractured national psyche and historic grievances from the South-East, we must be careful not to replace fact with emotion. This is not to dismiss the legitimate pain and frustration of students and parents, especially in Igbo-speaking states. The numbers are indeed staggering: out of 1,955,069 candidates who sat the UTME this year, over 1.5 million scored below 200. A significant number of these underperforming candidates are from the South-East and Lagos State.
Yet, instead of confronting the root of this academic catastrophe, many have chosen to weaponize ethnicity, turning this technological and administrative failure into another theatre of ethnic victimhood. That is a strategic error—one that risks giving JAMB exactly what it needs: an excuse.
The focus on regional targeting, while emotionally resonant, risks allowing JAMB to evade accountability. It opens the door for the exam body to claim sabotage or external manipulation—whether by hackers, political saboteurs, or unnamed enemies of the state. These are precisely the kinds of explanations that deflect from the hard, uncomfortable truth: that JAMB has failed in its fundamental duty as a regulatory institution.
The truth is that this is not a South-East problem. It is a Nigerian problem. It is the latest example of institutional decay in a country where planning is often poor, technology is poorly deployed, and oversight is nonexistent.
Let us be clear—what happened this year was not an isolated glitch. It was a systemic collapse.
A technical review carried out after widespread public backlash uncovered shocking operational flaws in JAMB’s examination delivery architecture. According to the report, JAMB’s switch from traditional count-based analysis to source-based validation and the implementation of a full-scale shuffling mechanism for both questions and answers were central to the failures. But even more damning was the revelation that a crucial system patch was only applied to the server cluster managing the North, while the cluster responsible for Lagos and the South-East was neglected.
To simplify: JAMB’s system relied on streaming exam data directly from a central server, rather than caching it locally at exam centres—a risky move in a country with unreliable electricity and internet infrastructure. Worse still, the servers handling two of Nigeria’s most densely populated zones were not updated with critical patches that would have ensured stability and fairness in the exam delivery process.
This is not merely a technical misstep. It is a fundamental design failure. An institution preparing for a nationwide examination had an entire year to prepare. Billions of naira are allocated to JAMB annually to execute this task. Yet, when the time came, what the Nigerian people received was a digital disaster—one that not only robbed students of fair scores but has also, tragically, led to the loss of lives.
One such life was that of Timilehin, a 19-year-old girl from Lagos, originally from Abeokuta. She took her own life after receiving a score of 190—less than what she had previously attained and below the threshold she needed for her chosen course of study. Her death is not just a statistic; it is a damning indictment of a failed system. It is a wake-up call.
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When Professor Ishaq Oloyede, JAMB’s Registrar, appeared before the press in tears, ostensibly moved by the tragedy and outrage, many interpreted this as a moment of accountability. But tears are not enough. We do not need sentiment from our institutions. We need structure. We need justice. We need consequences.
Professor Oloyede must take full responsibility for this debacle—not as a public relations exercise, but as an ethical imperative. Heads must roll. A public apology, a resignation, or at the very least, a full independent investigation, must follow. That is how institutions are repaired. That is how trust is rebuilt.
Even more critically, this moment must spark a national conversation about whether JAMB, as currently structured, still serves a meaningful purpose. Many education and technology experts have questioned whether a centralized body like JAMB remains useful in a world of decentralized, digital-first education systems. As one cloud systems engineer put it: JAMB has “outlived its usefulness.”
The technical explanation is telling. In an age where content delivery systems such as Netflix and YouTube optimize user experience through locally cached content—ensuring minimal reliance on live internet connections—JAMB chose to gamble with server-streamed delivery. This meant that thousands of candidates sitting for their future had to rely on the uninterrupted functionality of fragile Nigerian internet connections. No contingency. No local server backups. No adequate load-balancing mechanisms.
Why didn’t JAMB adopt globally accepted best practices for large-scale digital delivery? Why were regions like the South-East and Lagos—zones with the highest candidate concentrations—left without critical system updates? These are not questions of conspiracy. These are questions of competence.
Let us be clear: if the conversation continues to centre solely on whether this was an ethnic attack on Igbos, we will miss the bigger picture. We will reduce a national tragedy to a tribal squabble. And JAMB will escape the scrutiny it deserves.
This is not the time to point fingers at regions. This is the time to rebuild national standards and demand institutional accountability. Nigerians, regardless of region, must unite in outrage—not just because the South-East was affected, but because the entire country was failed.
JAMB has failed Nigeria. And failure must have consequences.
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