Education advocate and data analyst, Alex Onyia, took his campaign for transparency in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) a step further yesterday when he appeared as a guest on the popular TVC programme Your View. Onyia used the platform to reiterate his concerns over alleged system failures in the UTME administered by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), and demanded a prompt investigation and full disclosure from the Board.
Responding to the show’s anchor who asked whether anything had gone wrong in this year’s UTME, Onyia replied, “Oh yes, so, um, a lot of things went wrong, actually. And so currently now I have, um, 11,460 reports.” He added, “From different stages, and probably by the time I’m done here, probably be up to like 15,000.”
Onyia highlighted specific dates during the exam window which appeared to be riddled with irregularities. “The point is, I’ve already started the pattern. 24th, 25th, 26th and 28th. Those people who wrote the exam on those dates, their results are very bad,” he explained. He noted that these anomalies weren’t isolated but widespread, affecting candidates across different regions and schools.
He gave examples of students whose performance dropped inexplicably. “Someone scored 281 two years ago. The same person scored 311 last year. And the person is scoring 164 this year. I mean, this is not practical,” Onyia said. He added, “This is a similar case to 11,460 students.” According to him, these students are from “different kinds of schools,” including those “that raised excellence in all kinds of JAMB for like the past 30 years,” yet suddenly, “the best student in school is scoring 170.”
Onyia insisted the failure pattern was not due to poor preparation but technical problems within JAMB’s system. “So, there is a major glitch in JAMB system,” he stated. He said two main steps need to be taken: “One is… there’s actually no place in JAMB’s policy that inhibits them from sharing the marks. So, we need these students to see their marks. And secondly, they have to investigate these things.”
Speaking from a technical standpoint, Onyia explained, “This is a technical problem. Of course, this is an area of my expertise. But we know how these things happen. Many of these JAMB officials may never understand how this happens. Probably, it’s through their vendor, right? So, they have to fix this.”
He criticized JAMB’s response to the mass failure, calling it dismissive. “I don’t believe 11,460 students can be this wrong. They were very quick to release mass failure and all those blah, blah, blah,” he said. Onyia concluded with a direct challenge: “Honestly, I don’t think we experienced such number of failures in UCSJ. I feel…” — his voice trailing off in concern, but his message clear.
The interview has since sparked renewed conversations among parents, educators, and students, many of whom have taken to social media to echo Onyia’s call for JAMB to release detailed mark sheets and carry out a thorough investigation into the 2025 UTME technical process.
