- The CEO of Educare has given a report of what happened after attending a high-level technical review session presided over by JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede
- The education stakeholder, who went with his tech team, highlighted a major policy change on the part of JAMB that saw the highest obtained score in the UTME in 15 years
- However, he noted that there was a major operational flaw, which was uncovered, that affected Lagos and South-East service centres
Alex Onyia, the CEO of Educare, has reported what happened at the high-level technical review meeting, held on Wednesday, May 14, which the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) had invited him to be part of.
In a lengthy tweet on X, Alex gave a detailed report of how JAMB Registrar Ishaq Oloyede presided over the meeting, the stakeholders who were present, and the objective of the session.
Alex Onyia says there was a major operational flaw in the 2025 UTME.
Photo Credit: @winexviv, The Journal, jamb.gov.ngSource: Twitter
UTME 2025 critical discoveries
In the report submitted by Engr James Nnanyelugo for the Educare tech team, Alex said that JAMB shifted from the traditional count-based analysis to a source-based analysis of results.
Another discovery he made was that JAMB changed to a full-scale shuffling of answers and questions for the 2025 UTME and also put measures in place aimed at optimising performance and reducing lag.
“…*One of the most critical discoveries* made during this session revolved around *three* major systemic changes introduced in the 2025 UTME. The first was a shift from the traditional *count-based analysis* to a more robust *source-based analysis* of results. In previous years, JAMB evaluated the integrity of examination sessions primarily by counting the number of responses submitted per session. If the majority of candidates in a session of 250 submitted a near-complete set of answers, the session was deemed valid. Any significant deviation led to disqualification of that centre’s results. However, in 2025, a more advanced model was adopted—one that focused on the actual source and logic of the answers provided, rather than just their quantity.
“The second change involved *full-scale shuffling of both questions and answer options* . This ensured that even two candidates sitting in the same session would not receive identical permutations, thereby enhancing test security. The third change was *a series of systemic improvements aimed at optimizing performance and reducing lag* during exam sessions. This was a major policy change that saw the best and highest Obtained UTME score in 15 years. And this would have amounted to a great achievement by JAMB!”
UTME 2025 major flaw
According to Alex, a major operational flaw was noticed, which affected the results of candidates in Lagos and the five South-East states.
“…a major operational flaw was uncovered during the implementation phase. The system patch necessary to support both shuffling and source-based validation had been fully deployed on the server cluster supporting the KAD (Kaduna) zone, but it was not applied to the LAG (Lagos) cluster, which services centres in Lagos and the South-East.
“This omission persisted across all sessions until the 17th session, after which the error was discovered and corrected…”
Alex Onyia notes that there was a major policy change that positively affected the 2025 UTME.
Photo Credit: @winexviv, The Journal, jamb.gov.ngSource: Twitter
Alex’s update sparked outrage on social media.
See his tweet below:
Outrage trail JAMB’s recent update
TheTalk.NG compiled some of the reactions to the tweet below:
@amourab said:
“If their excuse was genuine, the LAG cluster, which was unpatched for sessions 1-16, should affect all states served by the cluster. However, the unpatched cluster only affected six states, meaning others were not writing the exams simultaneously. Something else is at play here.”
@OMO_9JA_ said:
“I’m confused, if the error was corrected on the 17th session which was the 5th day of exams, how didnt jamb know about the effect on students?
“Was there an attempted cover up?”
@akintunero said:
“But patches and fixes should have been implemented across all clusters and stress test carried out before the day of the exam just to be sure there won’t be surprises like this. JAMB team did drop the ball !”
@GregEkom said:
“In any sane climate, we should wake up tomorrow to a 3million student class action suit sighting emotional distress and damages against JAMB and the Ministry of education that initially jumped out to do press conference praising anti-malpractice measure for these results !!”
@Sire_Sammi said:
“How does a system that serve Lagos State not serve any neighbouring south West states but jumped hundreds of miles to serve the entire South Eastern states?
“Since when was South East and Lagos in the same region?
“This is deliberate.”
@kcemenikex said:
“Of course a patch that was not run on the LAG cluster, affected Lagos, skipped Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, etc, and went to affect only the South Eastern states, abi?
“Alex please help us explain how this can happen o.”
JAMB reschedules UTME for affected candidates
Meanwhile, TheTalk.NG previously reported that JAMB had rescheduled the 2025 UTME for the affected 379,997 candidates.
The JAMB registrar, who took responsibility for what he described as a “sabotage” of the 2025 UTME, said the affected candidates would start getting text messages from the board starting Thursday, May 15.
“As such, all the affected candidates will be contacted to reprint their examination slips towards retaking their examinations starting from 16th May, 2025,” Oloyede said.
Source: TheTalk.NG
