The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has ruled out the use of initial Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) scores by candidates affected by the recent resit, declaring that only the new results will be considered valid.

Speaking to The PUNCH on Monday, JAMB’s Public Communication Adviser, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, stated unequivocally that the initial scores have been annulled.

“You can’t have two results. One must be withdrawn — that means the old result has been withdrawn,” Benjamin emphasized.

This clarification follows a wave of inquiries from concerned parents whose wards reportedly performed better in the original UTME. One parent lamented, “My daughter scored over 200 in the initial exam but dropped below 200 in the resit. Can’t she use the better result?”

The resit results, released on Sunday, were the outcome of JAMB’s decision to reconduct the UTME for 379,000 candidates in Lagos and the Southeast following widespread technical and human errors that marred the original exams.

Interestingly, the resit produced a noticeable improvement in overall performance. Approximately 200,000 additional candidates crossed the 200-mark threshold, raising the number of high scorers to 565,988 — about 29.3% of the total 1.9 million candidates. This marks a significant rise compared to 2024 and 2023, when 24% and 23.36% of candidates respectively scored above 200.

Despite the uptick, a majority — 1,365,479 candidates or 70.7% — still scored below 200. However, this reflects a slight improvement from the initial results released on May 9, where over 1.5 million candidates fell short of the 200 mark.

The 2025 UTME also saw record-breaking participation, with 1,931,467 candidates — the highest number since the Computer-Based Test (CBT) format was introduced in 2013.

Meanwhile, the resit has sparked a wave of reactions on social media. Candidates have taken to X (formerly Twitter) to share dramatic score improvements. Alex Onyia, CEO of Educare, posted testimonials from students who made massive score jumps. “From 155 to 341. This brings me so much joy — my DMs are filled with stories like this,” one read.

A breakdown of the top scorers in 2025 further highlighted the improvement:

• 117,373 candidates (6.08%) scored 250 and above, compared to 77,070 (4.18%) in 2024 and 56,736 (3.73%) in 2023.

• 8,401 candidates (0.46%) scored 300 and above, the highest in recent years, surpassing 5,318 (0.35%) in 2023 and a mere 724 (0.06%) in 2021.

JAMB has reiterated that the new results offer a more accurate reflection of candidates’ performance, having rectified the earlier glitches.