Security agents in Abuja have arrested 20 suspects for allegedly hacking the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination results.
The suspects were caught by officers from the Department of State Services and the Nigerian Police Force. They are believed to be part of a large group of over 100 people who hack into the computer systems of examination bodies like JAMB and NECO.
Security sources said the group worked to damage JAMB’s image and reduce trust in the Computer-Based Test system. Their goal was to make students and parents doubt future computer-based exams, including those of NECO and WAEC.
The suspects reportedly collected between ₦700,000 and ₦2 million from candidates who wanted high scores. Many members of the group are owners of private schools and run “special centres” where candidates pay huge sums for guaranteed good results.
A security officer involved in the investigation said, “The suspects confessed that they hacked the server and altered results to favour those who paid them. They wanted to spoil JAMB’s system and push students away from computer-based exams.”
This arrest comes just two weeks after JAMB released the 2025 UTME results. The board had earlier admitted that many candidates scored poorly. In fact, over 78 per cent of students scored below 200 marks out of the possible 400.
On May 14, JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, said that 379,997 results were affected due to faulty server updates. The issue, he explained, came from a technical service provider and affected candidates in Lagos and South-East zones.
“We discovered that the candidate responses were not uploaded during the first three days of the exam. It was a serious problem that we did not notice until after results were released,” Oloyede said.
Because of this, JAMB organised a resit exam for affected candidates from May 16 to beyond May 19.
Investigations into the hacking scandal are still ongoing. Authorities say more arrests may follow, as they work to uncover other members of the syndicate.
