When Tech Fails Students: Lessons from the 2025 JAMB UTME Crisis

In what should have been a turning point for Nigeria’s educational technology system, the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) has instead become a cautionary tale. Over 78% of students who sat for this year’s JAMB exam scored below 200, and more than 379,000 candidates were asked to retake the exam due to errors linked to the computer-based testing (CBT) system. For a generation that was promised digital transformation in education, this was a devastating blow.

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has acknowledged technical and human errors across 157 CBT centers. Some students couldn’t log in; others watched helplessly as the systems shut down mid-exam. For an exam that largely determines access to higher education, these failures are not just technological, they are deeply personal, affecting the hopes, emotions, and future of hundreds of thousands of young Nigerians.

Technology: A Tool or a Trap?

When JAMB moved fully to CBT in 2015, it was celebrated as a bold leap toward modernizing education. Computer-based testing was supposed to reduce cheating, standardize assessments, and speed up result processing. But what we’ve seen is that technology, when poorly deployed, doesn’t just fail — it punishes.

Most of the affected students did everything right. They studied hard. They showed up early. They trusted the system. Yet they are now being told to retake exams they had already mentally moved past, not because of incompetence, but because of infrastructure failures and poor oversight.

The CBT model was not the problem. The problem was the lack of readiness and accountability among the tech providers and centers contracted to carry it out. Systems crashed. Power fluctuated. Logins failed. And yet, students were the ones who bore the consequences.

The Digital Divide is Still Real

One of the most disturbing revelations from this crisis is how deeply unequal access to EdTech remains. In urban areas, students may have computers and internet to practice CBT simulations. But in rural and underserved areas, many students took their first-ever computer-based exam at the JAMB center. Imagine walking into an exam that could determine your future and not knowing how to use a mouse.

JAMB currently does not provide any standardized or approved CBT practice platform for students. This leaves thousands at the mercy of third-party apps, most of which are either paid, unreliable, or misaligned with the real test structure. How can we push for a tech-driven exam without providing tech-driven preparation?

A Wake-Up Call for EdTech in Nigeria

This year’s UTME result isn’t just a setback for students, it’s a wake-up call for Nigeria’s education system. Technology is only as good as the planning, investment, and policy behind it. And right now, that foundation is shaky.

It’s time for EdTech stakeholders, JAMB, and the Ministry of Education to:

• Audit and certify all CBT centers, ensuring only credible ones are allowed to operate.

• Provide a free, JAMB-approved CBT simulation platform that works on low-end devices and offline.

• Train students and teachers, especially in public schools, on basic digital literacy well before exam season.

• Establish a grievance redress system that gives students a real voice when things go wrong.

Moving Forward

Nigeria’s young people deserve better. They deserve an education system that doesn’t just demand excellence, but supports it. Technology has the power to transform access, inclusion, and efficiency but only if it is backed by serious investment in infrastructure, policy, and human capacity.

If we continue to deploy digital solutions without digital readiness, we will keep seeing heartbreaks like this year’s UTME. And for a country with as much potential as Nigeria, that’s not just a failure of systems, it’s a failure of leadership.