On national TV, the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede, broke down to tears after acknowledging technical errors that disrupted the Unified Tertiary and Matriculation Examination (UTME) results of thousands of students in Nigeria. He admitted to the errors, apologised and promised that the affected students would resit for the examination. For some, this was enough to solve the national issue.
But was it?
Millions of candidates take the UTME every year. In 2025, over 2 million candidates registered for the examination. We can start with Opesusi Faith Timilehin, who reportedly took her own life after checking her result, which was lower than what she expected. Earlier, before the results were announced, JAMB released a statistical analysis of the 2025 UTME, which showed that this year’s examination was the most failed in history. On social media, people aired different factors responsible for this. Some blamed the economic status where inflation has made previously affordable protein like eggs, fish and others unaffordable. Some blamed the abysmal structure of the educational system in the country, while some blatantly blamed the students, maintaining that the students are no longer interested in studying or reading, but rather making money.
However, now that the examination body has acknowledged the technical error, what is the consolation for Faith, who lost her life due to a technical error that could have been prevented with a standard structure? What is the consolation for students who might have read that the efforts they put into reading numerous books have been relegated to a “generation interested in making money rather than reading?”
Apologies are good, but are they enough?
This is not a school hall miscommunication. It is a national tragedy. And like any tragedy, the damage doesn’t end with a press conference or a public apology on national television. In a country where over 2 million students register for the UTME annually, a glitch that invalidates thousands of results is not a minor error; it is a systemic failure. Professor Oloyede’s tears might have been sincere, but sincerity cannot rewrite results, resuscitate Faith, or erase the trauma that this generation of students now carries.
Think of it like a surgical operation.
In the operating room, a patient lies open, vulnerable, trusting that every monitor is functioning, every tool sterilised, and every pair of hands certain. One error—a slipped hand, a power outage, a miscalibrated machine—can cost a life. When the family is informed, no matter how remorseful the surgeon is, no matter how thorough the explanation, the outcome remains: someone is gone. The same way Faith is gone. Gone because a technical error, like an imprecise incision, found its way into the very system she trusted with her future.
Nigeria’s education system does not just need a reform, it needs surgery. A deep, carefully executed operation that strips away the old structures and implants a functional, transparent and humane system in its place. We cannot continue to gamble with the lives and futures of young Nigerians and cushion the aftermath with carefully worded statements–if they are actually carefully worded and not swept under the carpet of “Man proposes, God disposes.” (Whoever tweeted that should be dispossessed of their job, by the way.)
The real problem goes beyond one examination body. Whether the statistics were right or not, the 2025 JAMB failure rate, tagged the worst in history, reveals a broken chain that runs from dilapidated classrooms to underpaid teachers, to a harsh economy that starves growing minds of nutrition. And yet, when these students sit for a national exam that could decide their future, they’re met with malfunctioning computers, error-filled scripts, and an internet that collapses mid-test. Then we tell them it’s their fault. That they are lazy. That they are unserious. That their generation only wants money.
There must be accountability. Not just apologies. Not just internal audits and resit promises, but a review of the contracts awarded to tech service providers, an independent investigation into the causes of the failure, and a public-facing report detailing corrective measures. In 2025, with the tools, minds, and money Nigeria has, how do we still allow a national examination to be marred by technical issues? If we continue to treat errors like these as forgivable slip-ups, we will keep counting losses, both visible and invisible.
God forbid we keep burying students.
