The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has blamed God for the technical glitch that caused mass failure in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.

JAMB, in a post on its official X handle, described the outcome of the 2025 exam as a case of “Man Proposes, God Disposes!,” a phrase meaning efforts and work put into place for the exam were overridden by divine power.

*Man Proposes, God Disposes!,” JAMB wrote. “It has been established that a technical glitch affected 157 centres out of the 887 centres in the 2025 UTME. This was basically responsible for the general low performance of the candidates scheduled to sit the examination in those centres.”

The exam body said affected candidates will have to retake their exams from May 16.

“As such, all the affected candidates will be contacted to reprint their examination slips towards retaking their examinations starting from 16th May, 2025,” JAMB said.

This comes hours after its registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, on Wednesday admitted and apologised for the errors.

Mr Oloyede, during a news conference in Bwari on Wednesday, took responsibility for the errors in the just-concluded examinations.

About 1.9 million candidates who sat for the UTME, over 1.5 million reportedly scored below 200 out of the maximum 400 marks.

The board said that a total of 1,955,069 results were processed, out of which only 4,756 candidates (0.24 per cent) scored 320 and above.

Also, 7,658 candidates (0.39 per cent) scored between 300 and 319, bringing the total for those who scored 300 and above to 12,414 candidates (0.63 per cent). 73,441 candidates (3.76 per cent) scored between 250 and 299 while 334,560 candidates (17.11 per cent) scored between 200 and 249.

A total of 983,187 candidates (50.29 per cent) scored between 160 and 199, which is widely regarded as the minimum threshold for admissions in many institutions.

In the same vein, 488,197 candidates (24.97 per cent) scored between 140 and 159, 57,419 candidates (2.94 per cent), scored between 120 and 139, 3,820 candidates (0.20 per cent) scored between 100 and 119, and 2,031 candidates (0.10 per cent) scored below 100.

The JAMB registrar also assured that the affected candidates would be communicated with through Short Message Service (SMS) by Thursday, so they could reprint their slips for rescheduled examinations on Friday and Saturday.