 has confirmed that candidates who sat for the recent UTME resit cannot revert to their original exam scores, as only the resit results will be officially recognized.){kind=link}
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has confirmed that candidates who sat for the recent UTME resit cannot revert to their original exam scores, as only the resit results will be officially recognized.
Fabian Benjamin, JAMB’s Public Communication Adviser, told The PUNCH on Monday that the initial exam results have been invalidated following the resit.
“Candidates cannot hold two results simultaneously; the earlier score is officially withdrawn,” he stated.
This clarification comes amid concerns from parents whose children performed better in the initial UTME than in the resit.
One parent asked, “My child scored above 200 in the first exam but scored lower after the resit. Can the initial result be used instead?”
The resit results were published on Sunday after the board decided to conduct the exercise due to technical problems and errors during the original exams, which affected around 379,000 candidates primarily in Lagos and the Southeast.
The new results revealed a notable increase in performance, with approximately 200,000 additional candidates scoring 200 and above, raising the total to 565,988, representing 29.3 percent of the nearly 1.9 million candidates.
For comparison, only 439,961 candidates (24 percent) reached this score threshold in 2024, and 355,689 (23.36 percent) did so in 2023.
Despite the improvement, the majority—1,365,479 candidates or 70.7 percent—still scored below 200, though this is a reduction from over 1.5 million candidates in that category in the initial May 9 release.
This year’s UTME saw the highest participation since the computer-based system began in 2013, with 1,931,467 candidates registered.
Social media has been abuzz with candidates sharing their improved resit scores.
Alex Onyia, CEO of Educare, posted on X, highlighting stories such as one where a candidate’s score rose from 155 to 341.
Analyzing top scores, 117,373 candidates (6.08 percent) scored 250 and above this year, up from 77,070 (4.18 percent) last year. Meanwhile, those who scored 300 or more hit 8,401 (0.46 percent), the highest in recent years.
JAMB insisted that the resit results offer a fairer and more accurate assessment after correcting issues that compromised the original exam.