UTME Resit: Over 200,000 candidates cross 200 mark 

Following weeks of public outcry over mass failures in this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has confirmed that over 200,000 additional candidates have now scored above 200 marks after a resit was conducted for affected students.

The resit, which was concluded recently, was triggered by a wave of criticism, confusion, and frustration that trailed the release of the original UTME results on May 9, 2025. More than 1.5 million of the 1.9 million candidates who sat for the initial examination scored below the average benchmark of 200 out of 400 marks, sparking a national debate on the integrity of the examination process and raising serious questions about the credibility of the results.

Educational stakeholders, parents, and candidates voiced strong concerns, with some alleging system malfunctions, while others questioned whether the unusually low performance was due to faulty grading or technical issues related to the Computer-Based Test (CBT) system introduced in 2013.

Responding to the uproar, JAMB launched an internal probe into the circumstances surrounding the poor performance. The investigation uncovered a mix of technical and human errors in its CBT delivery system, particularly affecting centres in Lagos and the South-East, where candidates reported glitches, login failures, system freezes, and premature submission of examination scripts.

As a result, JAMB scheduled a resit for 379,000 candidates in those affected regions. According to the updated results released on Sunday, the resit yielded a significant improvement in overall performance. JAMB revealed that approximately 565,988 candidates — accounting for 29.3 per cent of the total 1.9 million — now scored 200 and above, compared to 24 per cent in 2024 and 23.36 per cent in 2023.

This represents an increase of over 200,000 candidates who crossed the 200 mark after the resit, a notable improvement from the previous outcome where over 1.5 million candidates had initially fallen below the average score.

JAMB further noted that this year’s UTME saw 1,931,467 results released — a full 100 per cent of candidates who sat for the exam — a significant jump from 1,842,364 results released in 2024, indicating a growing trend in UTME participation.

Performance in higher score brackets also showed improvement. In the 250-and-above category, 117,373 candidates (6.08 per cent) attained this score range in 2025, up from 77,070 (4.18 per cent) in 2024 and 56,736 (3.73 per cent) in 2023. For scores of 300 and above, 8,401 candidates (0.46 per cent) achieved this feat in 2025, compared to 5,318 (0.35 per cent) in 2023, and only 724 (0.06 per cent) in 2021. In 2013 and 2014, no candidates scored 300 and above under the then-nascent CBT model.

Despite these gains, the majority of candidates — 1,365,479 or 70.7 per cent — still scored below 200, underscoring the continued challenge of raising academic standards and test preparedness among Nigerian secondary school graduates.

JAMB has yet to announce whether further reforms will follow in light of the controversy, but its leadership maintains that the Board is committed to transparency, fairness, and technological innovation in the conduct of public examinations.