The Chief Executive Officer of an 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 Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB)’s fraud detection system is “completely flawed.”
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 manoeuvre.
“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 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.
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.”
