The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has ruled out the possibility of candidates using their earlier Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination scores in place of results from the recent resit.
JAMB’s Public Communication Adviser, Fabian Benjamin, told The PUNCH on Monday that the initial results have been voided, and only the resit scores will be recognised.
“You can’t have two results. One must be withdrawn – that means the old result has been withdrawn,” Benjamin said.
Some parents of candidates who participated in the resit had inundated The PUNCH with inquiries on Monday noting that their wards/children scored higher in the initial exams than the resit.
“My daughter scored over 200 in the initial exam and scored lesser than 200 in the resit. Can she use the result of the initial exam which is better than this last one?” one of the parents inquired.
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JAMB released the resit UTME results on Sunday.
The resit followed widespread outcry over technical and human errors that marred the original examination, prompting the board to conduct another exam for 379,000 affected candidates in Lagos and Southeast states.
The fresh results showed marked improvement as about 200,000 more candidates crossed the 200 mark, raising the total number of those who scored 200 and above to 565,988 — representing 29.3 per cent of the 1.9 million candidates who sat the exam.
In comparison, only 439,961 (24 per cent) crossed the same mark in 2024, while 355,689 (23.36 per cent) did so in 2023.
JAMB noted that although the results reflect an overall improvement, the majority — 1,365,479 candidates, or 70.7 per cent — still scored below 200.
This marks a slight improvement from the initial result released on May 9, 2025, where over 1.5 million candidates scored below 200.
The board stated that the 2025 exercise saw a record participation of 1,931,467 candidates — the highest since the Computer-Based Test format was introduced in 2013.
In a case of different strokes for different folks, some candidates, who participated in the resit, had taken to X to share testimonies of their new scores in the examination.
Chief Executive Officer, of Educare, Alex Onyia shared testimonies of candidates on his X.
One of them read, “From 155 to 341. This brings me so much joy I have so many of this type of result on my DM right now.”
A breakdown of high scorers showed that 117,373 candidates (6.08 per cent) scored 250 and above in 2025, up from 77,070 (4.18 per cent) in 2024 and 56,736 (3.73 per cent) in 2023.
Similarly, 8,401 candidates (0.46 per cent) scored 300 and above in 2025 — the highest in recent years — compared to 5,318 (0.35 per cent) in 2023 and just 724 (0.06 per cent) in 2021.
JAMB maintained that the new results reflect a fairer assessment of candidates’ performance after correcting initial lapses.
