JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, disclosed this on Friday during a press briefing in Abuja, saying over 1.9 million candidates sat for the examination across the country.

He revealed that it is withholding the results of 39,834 candidates due to issues related to examination malpractices.

According to the JAMB boss, 80 individuals are currently being interrogated over various forms of examination fraud, with Anambra State recording the highest number of suspects, 14 in total.

Oloyede also stated that 467 underage candidates who took the exam scored above the minimum cut-off mark, while 50 candidates had so far been linked to cheating.

“A total of 2,030,862 candidates registered for the 2025 UTME, which was conducted across 882 CBT centres, each of which was generally monitored by 10 invigilators of different categories. In all, over 10,000 officials were involved in conducting, monitoring and managing the exercise. Without equivocation, this year’s exercise will be remembered as the most successful in recent times,” Oloyede stated.

“Out of the total number of 2,030,862 candidates registered for the 2025 UTME, 1,957,000 were successfully verified for the examination, 71,705 were absent and a total of 2,157 candidates’ fingerprints were rejected by the machines as invalid.

“This was beyond the acceptable normal margin of failure. Subsequent discoveries in this regard indicated that a number of the candidates whose fingers were unrecognised had one question of registration infraction or another to answer.

“Each of these cases would be reviewed and determined on its merit. Of the 41,027 registered underaged candidates, 40,260 sat for the examination whose UTME results are being isolated for further tests to identify the normally few exceptional candidates.”