Nigeria’s education system has once again come under fire as the same government officials who earlier praised the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for its exam conduct are now silent in the face of mass failure and technological breakdown. The Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, who just weeks ago lauded JAMB’s operations and shifted blame to WAEC and NECO for widespread exam malpractice, has remained conspicuously absent since JAMB admitted to massive technical failures in its 2025 UTME.
Just weeks earlier, Dr. Alausa had said confidently on Channels TV, “JAMB conducts its exams using Computer-Based Testing (CBT). They’ve put in so much security that cheating has been eliminated.” He went further to blame the “pervasive cheating in NECO and WAEC” as the reason diligent students lose motivation, insisting that these older exam bodies were the true culprits behind academic underperformance.
But the script changed dramatically when JAMB’s Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, emotionally confessed before the media that the 2025 UTME was marred by severe technical glitches. “Once again, we apologise and assure you that this incident represents a significant setback… We are human and we are not perfect. I am sorry,” he said as he wept before journalists, a rare sight from a high-ranking official in Nigeria’s bureaucracy.
It turned out that 157 out of 887 CBT centres experienced catastrophic failures ranging from frozen computer screens to incomplete submissions. These affected over 78,000 students across Lagos and southeastern states like Anambra, Abia, Enugu, and Imo. “This is not a performance issue; this is a systems failure,” Oloyede admitted. “Our technological infrastructure crumbled at the wrong time, and our students bore the consequences.”
The irony couldn’t be starker. While the Education Minister was publicly calling for WAEC and NECO to adopt CBT like JAMB to eliminate malpractice, JAMB’s own system was falling apart. “We’re moving WAEC and NECO to CBT by November 2025,” Dr. Alausa had earlier declared. “We have to use technology to fight this fraud.” That same technology has now failed thousands of students, and Alausa has offered no comments since the revelations.
Parents and students are outraged. “This is not just an educational setback; it’s a mental and emotional crisis,” said Mrs. Uloma Chukwu, whose son was affected in Lagos. “They praised JAMB to the skies, blamed others, and now they can’t even show their faces to apologise? What kind of leadership is that?”
JAMB, to its credit, has announced that students in affected centres will be allowed to resit their exams starting Thursday, May 16, 2025. “We are implementing stricter surveillance, multi-layered system backups and independent real-time auditing,” Oloyede said. Yet the silence from the Ministry of Education has raised serious questions about double standards and selective accountability.
What bothers education stakeholders most is the absence of responsibility from those who were the first to praise and promote JAMB as a gold standard. “It’s disturbing that the Minister who publicly blamed WAEC and NECO is now hiding when it’s JAMB’s turn to explain,” said Dr. Ayo Olumide, an education policy analyst. “The public deserves consistency and leadership, not opportunistic praise and ghosting when things go wrong.”
As the nation reflects on this unfolding scandal, one question looms large: what is Nigeria’s education system becoming when institutions shift blame, evade responsibility, and leave millions of youths to suffer the consequences? The Minister’s earlier claim, “We have a youthful population that we’re training to be useful,” now rings hollow in the face of institutional failure and official silence.
