CEO of education technology company, Educare, Alex Onyia has called for a full-scale investigation into the conduct of the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), stating unequivocally that the exam body’s fraud detection system is “completely flawed.”
“That one I know is flawed. Their fraud detection algorithm is… it’s completely flawed. It needs to actually be improved on because the logic and everything needs to actually be improved on,” He said.
Speaking during an interview on ARISE News on Monday, Onyia challenged the official narrative that the system only experienced glitches.
“See, I think, let’s not use the word glitch. I think this is actually a clever maneuver,” he said. He pointed to several irregular patterns in student scores as red flags, “Somebody scored 281 two years ago, scored 311 and the person is scoring 164. Somebody that won the National Mathematics Competition is scoring 40.”
Onyia disclosed that when he shared his concerns online, he received over 100 responses from students who reported issues with their results.
“I had at least over 100 people who have been writing me that they are about to take their lives. And you can see that JAMB is something that is very critical to the life of these children,” he said.
Describing his findings from JAMB’s system, Onyia said, “There are two main clusters. They have the CAD cluster and they have the LAC cluster… Of course, Kogi FCT is part of the LAC cluster. So the big question was, why did it affect just these people?” He insisted that inconsistencies in the impact of the supposed glitch raise deeper concerns that require thorough scrutiny.
While acknowledging JAMB’s general transparency, Onyia expressed strong reservations about third-party vendors.
“There are people that they work with… Because we need to understand what exactly happened,” he said, adding, “This is the biggest, for the past 12 years, what has been happening?”
He criticised the makeup exam process, suggesting it was rushed and insufficient.
“I recommend that they remark. Because doing a receipt in 48 hours is something, for me, I say it’s not practicable.”
Despite some surface-level access to JAMB’s systems, Onyia argued that more transparency is needed. “They just give us like a surface level access. Not like a deep level access. API probably will expose their system a lot more, which is actually security risk.”
He also suggested broader reforms and greater transparency in vendor engagement, “I would like to look at the vendors again. Yes, and even the process of how they got the vendors… Very important.”
On the future of the UTME, Onyia stressed its relevance but demanded greater efficiency. “The most important thing here is that it has to be very efficient. That is all that everybody’s asking for. And what you did is actually what you should get.”
Faridah Abdulkadiri
