The True Extent of JAMB’s Failure

Of the 1,955,069 candidates who sat for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, only about 432,829, some 22 percent, scored 200 and above, a 2 percent drop from last year’s 24 percent. These numbers tell a familiar tale, one of an educational system mired in the same dereliction that pervades nearly every aspect of Nigerian society. 

Shortly after the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) released a clumsy Google docs file on its X account, which it tagged “Statistical Analysis of 2025 UTME Result,” frontman of Nigeria’s Labor Party Peter Obi issued a crestfallen statement through his X account in which he decried the deplorable state of the country’s educational sector. “The latest JAMB results once again highlight the consequences of decades of underinvestment in education, a sector that should be central to our national development strategy.” He, however, closed the statement on an optimistic note, rightly promoting education as “the most critical driver of national development and the most powerful tool for lifting people out of poverty.”

His commentary is beyond apt. Years and decades of government neglect and underfunding have left the country’s education system, from primary through tertiary levels, in shambles. Many of the country’s public schools are dilapidated, lacking basic amenities such as clean water, sufficient power supply, and other critical infrastructure. Classes are also typically overcrowded to the point where the whole thing loses practicality. This is true for public tertiary institutions as it is for primary and secondary schools. The biggest issue with our educational system is, however, foundational. A performative air seems to underpin educational activities in the country. Anyone who has experienced the Nigerian educational system will agree that, for the most part, lectures and assignments are a means to an end—passing exams—rather than being ends in themselves. 

In Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness, his first India travelogue, we find him repeatedly lamenting this lack of “conceptual grasp.” This problem, it appears, is as pervasive in other parts of the world, India in this case, as it is in Nigeria. Naipaul’s commentary, however, addresses the issue with a level of precision and canniness that feels especially relevant to the situation in Nigeria today. In the text, the writer exasperatedly moans about the pervasive lack of understanding and about people “doing things” by rote. Which is to say, without understanding the deeper significance of their actions. 

At one point, he honmes in on a teacher, criticizing his performative show of knowledge as a kind of intellectual hollowness. After an intense debate, the teacher acquiesces to Naipaul’s criticism, stating that he only teaches because it’s his job. In a chilling reversal of roles, the pupils who Naipaul interviews in the book also betray a lack of understanding of the deeper import of the subjects they learn in school. School, for them, is a rite of passage they simply have to endure like others before them did.

The critiques aside, this year’s UTME results have triggered a flurry of allegations of ineptitude on the part of JAMB. Specifically, the  line of complaints have  centered around the disparity between the candidates’ self-assessment of their performance and their actual scores. It’s not unusual for students to overestimate their performance in exams, especially multiple-choice assessments, which lack the rigor of essay-type assessments, only to be stunned by their actual score. In the case of this year’s UTME, however, we have ample reason to doubt the veracity of the results. 

Take the case of Nketachukwu Ofomata, who, according to Daudu Quam Oluwaseun, an educational consultant, “was given 160 [in this year’s UTME]” despite having made 7 A1s in WAEC, scoring 1500 in SAT, and having scored 312 in last year’s UTME. “This is not just about low scores, this is about a broken system,” Oluwaseun said, referring to JAMB’s opaque marking system. Countless complaints of this stripe abound, and given their ubiquity, one would expect some concerted effort from JAMB to rescue the situation, at the very least, a public announcement of their commitment towards making the exam more transparent. The examination board has, however, remained silent despite a growing chorus of discontent.

Well, not exactly silent. The X account of the examination board recently retweeted a post attributing this year’s historic failure rate and the accompanying deluge of contested results to JAMB tightening the lid on question leakages. “Many are quick to point out how many students didn’t score up to half in the @JAMBHQ exams, but few are acknowledging the real win. JAMB questions are no longer leaking, and the exams are now nearly leakproof. That’s a monumental achievement in restoring credibility to our education system,” the tweet says. 

This offers a glimpse into JAMB’s position on the matter. The increased failure rate is material proof that their efforts at curbing malpractice have begun to yield fruits. In other words, instead of this being a call for education reform, they have chosen to interpret the situation differently, seeing it instead as a reason to pat their backs. They have all but refused to acknowledge culpability despite widespread complaints of glitches during the exam and the numerous cases that fail to add up, given the candidates demonstrated history of academic success. They, however, seem to instinctively understand that remaining silent will only become more untenable as the days go by and have released another statement titled “Public Complaint Regarding The Release of The 2025 UTME.” In the document signed by Fabian Benjamin, the examination board’s Public Communication Advisor, they claim to be particularly concerned “about the unusual complaints originating from a few states within the Federation.” 

The document is laden with equivocal language, presumably to lessen the impact of what has so far been a terrible handling of an error-ridden examination. They claim to be scrutinizing the complaints with the help of a few professionals and that “if it is determined that there were indeed glitches, we will implement appropriate remedial measures promptly.” While the promise of possible “remedial measures” might offer some comfort to the affected candidates, it’s hard not to express some skepticism towards JAMB’s promise. Given that countless students have complained of glitches that logged them out during the examination, it’s impossible that JAMB is entirely in the dark about the widespread glitches and needs to convene a board of professionals to confirm “that there were indeed glitches.”

That aside, what will these “remedial solutions” look like? Will the affected students have to retake the test or will they receive a fixed upgrade to their scores in penitence? Also, what guarantee do we have that some affected students won’t be left out in this move to remedy the problem? This sloppiness with which they have handled this situation is almost as terrible as the execution of the exams. This becomes incredibly bleak when you consider that behind the statistics and failure rate that have been trotted out by JAMB and debated fiercely by disgruntled guardians are thousands of students, with dreams and aspirations, who were failed by a broken system. 

They played their parts, studied hard for months, arrived at the venue that day, and subjected themselves to JAMB’s needlessly tedious accreditation process, only to be throttled by forces beyond their control. On the topic of these students having to navigate JAMB’s byzantine processes, the 6:30am resumption time being one of these, a candidate, Esther Ololade, was kidnapped on her commute to her JAMB center. She was later found, thankfully. When Peter Obi criticized the examination board for this, they brushed his comments and evaded any responsibility. It’s this same insensitivity that has underscored their handling of the situation thus far. In a bizarre sense, this is an apt metaphor for the Nigerian experience. This is, however, unacceptable. If the youth of a nation is its future—and indeed they quite literally are—then the organization responsible for ushering these students from secondary schools to tertiary institutions must recognize the responsibility vested in them and act with corresponding integrity.