By Publisher
Kindly share:
Once upon a time in the Federal Republic of Errors, sorry, Nigeria, where Internet speed is slower than a snail on a pilgrimage and government bureaucracy is thicker than a pot of Afang soup, a grand annual ritual known as the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, took place.
This sacred rite, conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, determines the academic destiny of millions of young Nigerians; some of whom study by candlelight, some by generator noise, and others by sheer divine intervention.
But the 2025 edition of this academic bloodbath is biblically worse. It will not be remembered for sterling performances or record-breaking scores. No. It will be remembered for tears, tragedy, technical failures, and the weeping wail of one distinguished professor.
In a country where backup generators outnumber working policies, and the most advanced national tech is the WhatsApp broadcast, JAMB 2025 pulled off the impossible: It glitched harder than INEC. And that’s saying a lot for a country that once livestreamed electoral results directly into the abyss.
For those just tuning in, JAMB, our national sorting hat for university admissions, managed to convert what should’ve been a straightforward CBT exam into a dystopian tech-comedy nobody auditioned for.
The servers choked. The systems coughed. The candidates cried.
And then… the Registrar cried too.
It all began like it always does for JAMB, Nigeria’s Annual Hunger Games; millions of students, freshly bathed in anxiety, showed up at CBT centres armed with God, biro, and biometric faith. But what they got was a practical lesson in digital nihilism.
And then came the weeping professor.
Enter the man of the hour: Professor Ishaq Oloyede, JAMB Registrar and custodian of the great exam scrolls. A man once feared and admired in equal measure, known for digitalising JAMB and reducing malpractice during his tenure. Respected academic, reformist, and, apparently, human after all.
In a rare public display of emotion, the Registrar wept while addressing the press.
In a widely circulated video, the good professor, usually stoic like a carved statue from Ile-Ife, was seen crying during a press briefing. Not just moist-eyed. Full on weeping. The man who once made students quake with mere circulars was reduced to sniffles and tissues.
“I am pained… these are innocent children,” he said. “The systems failed them. The vendors failed us. Nigeria failed them.”
Touching, yes. But also a bit like crying at a fire you helped start by outsourcing your CBT to a cybercafé with one UPS and two prayers.
Sympathy poured in. But so did sarcasm.
People questioned the use of tears after the house had already burnt down. A cheeky X (formerly Twitter), now permanently known as Chaos) quipped:
“Oga, na wetin be this? Crying doesn’t bring back the CBT server.”
“Sir, are the tears Bluetooth-compatible? Maybe the servers can download empathy.”
“This year’s JAMB: Powered by diesel, despair, and duct tape.”
“JAMB should be renamed JOKE Admission Board.”
“Oloyede cried, but our future cried harder.”
“Glitches don’t kill dreams. Glitches facilitated by JAMB kill dreams.”
The comments kept pouring in.
Oloyede’s tears became a meme. The only thing running smoothly in this exam was public mockery.
The comedy curdled into tragedy when news broke that a young girl in Delta State, devastated by a poor score she believed was due to technical failure, took her own life.
A straight-A student. Meticulous. Hopeful. And failed by a system that couldn’t differentiate between a child and a CAPTCHA.
According to family members, her preparations were intense, her hope was high, and her belief in the system was, tragically, misplaced.
Her passing sent shockwaves through the nation. For a country used to pain, this was a punch in the gut. One that revealed not only systemic failure, but societal pressure so intense that one bad exam result could end a life.
And how did JAMB respond? It released a brief robotic condolence statement. There were no resignations. No inquiries. Just another bullet point on Nigeria’s long list of preventable deaths.
A brief condolence message buried under a press release about upcoming exam rewrites.
JAMB’s solution? Invite the traumatised to relive the trauma.
Thousands of candidates were summoned to rewrite exams, many with less than 24 hours’ notice. Imagine surviving a plane crash and being told to reboard, with the same airline, same pilot, same thunderstorm. “Trust us, this time we fixed the wing with duct tape.”
But let’s be clear; this wasn’t a rewrite in the traditional sense. This was a psychological warfare mission, a PTSD refresher course.
Imagine a child who sat through an exam where the mouse didn’t work, the screen froze, and the invigilator told them to “imagine the questions in their head.” Now imagine telling that child to redo the whole thing with the same organisation in charge.
Some students reportedly broke down during the rewrites. Others walked into centres only to face another round of glitches. It was like asking survivors of a shipwreck to board the same boat again, this time with promises that the iceberg had been “patched.”
To add spice to the digital carnage, the Minister of Education, let’s call him Professor Spokescript Oluremi Adebambo, gave a press conference that sounded like it was written by a broken typewriter and edited by denial. He gloated over the performance and blamed the hapless, voiceless students for the debacle.
“We are proud of the exercise,” he added, chin raised high. “The glitches were minimal. They build resilience.
“We are proud of this year’s JAMB. The process has been seamless,” he declared confidently, as generators exploded in the background and students wailed into the wind. “We commend Prof. Oloyede for his efforts. Any issues are the work of saboteurs. Or the opposition. Or maybe termites,” he added hastily, without any scintilla of proof.
Resilience. The national excuse for every institutional failure. We’ve turned suffering into pedagogy.
Sir, if trauma built resilience, Nigerians would be Wolverine by now.
When journalists asked about candidates being asked to resit exams due to system errors, the minister replied: “This is good for their character development. Trauma is part of the learning curve.” However, he later walked back the statement after social media cooked him like ogbono soup without crayfish.
This ministerial masterstroke was only rivaled by Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Mahmood Yakubu in 2023, who proudly declared the elections “transparent,” even as voters watched their results disappear into the Bermuda Triangle of the IReV portal.
To fully appreciate the disaster that was JAMB 2025, one must remember the 2023 Nigerian general elections. Ah, yes, that festival of thumbprints and broken promises, where INEC proudly unveiled its shiny new BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System), only for it to perform worse than a candle in a hurricane.
On that Election Day, voters queued in the sun for hours, only for servers to “glitch” like a Nollywood ghost possessed their modems. Election results uploaded themselves to heaven instead of the IReV portal.
Back then, Nigerians blamed INEC, tech contractors, and spiritual forces. Fast forward two years, and JAMB apparently borrowed INEC’s playbook, complete with malfunctioning servers, nationwide confusion, and the usual comforting excuse: “It was a technical error.”
One X user captured it best: “JAMB must have copied INEC’s operating manual—Ctrl C, Ctrl Glitch.”
If INEC’s elections were a glitch-fest of democratic destiny, JAMB’s UTME became a remix of that horror show, but with children’s futures on the line instead of ballot papers.
It’s almost as if Nigerian institutions were running a nationwide competition: Who can glitch more efficiently under pressure?
Spoiler alert: It’s a tie.
There’s a strange symmetry to it all.
INEC: Botched a presidential election with a billion-naira tech that couldn’t upload results.
JAMB: Botched an academic future with a billion-naira tech that couldn’t upload scores.
INEC’s servers: Froze under pressure.
JAMB’s servers: Died on arrival.
INEC’s reaction: “Technical error.”
JAMB’s reaction: “Rewrite.”
Public response: Memes, rage, hashtags.
Official response: Committees, condolences, confusion.
At this point, Nigeria may be the only country where digital systems work perfectly until you need them.
Meanwhile, in the Real Nigeria, a student in Kwara is still waiting for a text, confirming her rewrite date.
Another in Benue had to sell his phone to travel for his second exam.
In Port Harcourt, a candidate swore the CBT centre’s mouse was held together with rubber bands and prayer points.
One boy in Enugu broke down mid-exam and whispered, “God, just give me fish farming.”
But don’t worry. According to the Minister, this builds character.
So… What Now?
As the dust settles, we must ask ourselves: Is this the best we can do?
A country with over 200 million people, many of whom are under the age of 25, cannot afford to treat its premier entrance examination like a poorly rehearsed school play. This isn’t about one man’s tears or one girl’s tragedy. It’s about a broken system that punishes the hopeful and rewards the incompetent.
We don’t need tears. We need accountability.
We don’t need press statements. We need action.
And above all, we need a system where a child’s future isn’t decided by whether a computer centre in Benue remembered to pay its NEPA bill.
JAMB has become a Reality Show, and for next season, we recommend:
- Digital Infrastructure Audit – Stop outsourcing to vendors who think “server” is a waiter.
- Psychological Support – Introduce free counseling for candidates before and after exams.
- Accountability Measures – Public blacklisting of centres with poor records. Name them. Shame them.
- Ministerial Reboot – Perhaps, ministers should sit for JAMB too. If they pass, they stay. If not, they go. Fair?
- National Mourning – For the lost lives, lost dreams, and lost data packets.
Nigeria, ever the resilient giant, will forget in a week. The tears will dry, the minister will cut another ribbon, and JAMB will prepare for another year.
But somewhere in Delta, a family mourns a daughter. Somewhere in Kano, a student who saw three different questions at once is being asked to smile for a rewrite. Somewhere in Abuja, Professor Oloyede is being comforted by staff who whisper, “Sir, next time, just blame hackers.”
And somewhere, in a dank office of the Ministry of Education, another committee is being formed. Because if Nigeria has mastered one thing, it is turning tragedy into bureaucracy, and hoping nobody notices.
What happened with JAMB 2025 isn’t just incompetence; it’s elite-level indifference wrapped in bureaucracy and powered by diesel. We have digitised dysfunction.
In a country overflowing with young talent, coders, thinkers, creators, we somehow manage to make the very act of testing them a national hazard.
Maybe next year, we can contract JAMB to INEC and just merge the two. One glitch to rule them all.
Or better yet, send both boards to sit the same CBT. We let them keep their jobs if they pass without a system crash. If not, they can rewrite. In Sokoto. Without Wi-Fi.
Na Naija be dis, where the server always dies and the system is forever “rebooting.”
