The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has introduced an online system allowing candidates seeking admission into Nigerian tertiary institutions through the 2026 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) to verify and upload their O’Level results from home.
The service, which initially covers results issued by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), is designed to reduce candidates’ dependence on Computer-Based Test (CBT) centres, particularly during periods of heavy patronage. JAMB will electronically verify candidates’ results directly with the relevant examination bodies before uploading them to candidate profiles.
To use the system, candidates must first get a Result Verification Code by visiting buyresultsverificationcode.ng and entering their National Identification Number (NIN). After verifying their NIN, candidates select the number of exam sittings and the relevant examination body. Those with two O’Level sittings then log into their JAMB e-Facility dashboard, click “2026 UTME O’Level Upload,” and enter their Verification Code to see their two verified results. Candidates must select between five and nine subjects, without repeating any subject, then click “Apply the O’Level Results” to complete the process.
JAMB’s Acting Director of Public Affairs and Protocol, Dr Fabian Benjamin, said the initiative was part of the Board’s renewed commitment to making its services “easier, faster, safer and more convenient” for candidates, and reflects the vision of JAMB’s sixth Registrar, Prof Segun Aina, to build a more technology-driven service.
A System Built to Fix Years of Recurring Result Problems
The new upload system is a direct response to problems that have plagued JAMB’s registration process for years. Benjamin said the manual upload process had long been associated with misplaced or mixed-up paper results, the submission of unverified or fraudulent results, and errors made when candidates entered subjects and grades by hand.
Fraudulent results have caused real damage to candidates in the past. In 2023, a UTME candidate, Mmesoma Ejikeme, claimed to have scored 362 out of 400, which would have made her Nigeria’s top-performing candidate that year, before JAMB found the result to be fake, revealing she had actually scored 249 and faced possible prosecution.
CBT centres themselves have also been a longstanding source of trouble for candidates. An investigation found that some centres profited by spreading false information urging candidates to make unnecessary repeat visits to re-upload their results, exploiting confusion around JAMB’s registration process for financial gain.
More broadly, JAMB has battled a rising wave of technology-driven exam fraud in recent years, including cases of candidates manipulating registration photos and fingerprints to enable impersonation, with thousands of results flagged for investigation in a single exam cycle.
Why This Change Matters, and Who Benefits
The core cause behind this reform is JAMB’s push to reduce human error and fraud by removing manual, in-person steps from a process long vulnerable to both. By verifying results directly with WAEC rather than relying on candidates to submit paper certificates, JAMB removes an entire category of possible fraud and mistake at once.
For candidates, the immediate effect is less time and money spent travelling to CBT centres, and less exposure to the queues, network failures and opportunistic scams that have affected the registration process in the past.
For CBT centres, the change could mean reduced foot traffic and, by extension, less opportunity for the kind of exploitative practices some centres have been accused of in the past, though it may also affect their income from candidates who previously had no choice but to visit in person for this step.
At the national level, a cleaner, more verifiable results process strengthens the integrity of Nigeria’s entire university admissions system, an important goal for a country where public trust in JAMB’s processes has been repeatedly tested by fraud scandals and malpractice cases in recent years.
What Could Make the System Work Even Better
Extending the same electronic verification arrangement to other examination bodies beyond WAEC, such as the National Examinations Council (NECO), would ensure candidates from all backgrounds benefit equally from the new system.
Clear, accessible guidance for candidates in areas with limited internet access or digital literacy would help ensure the shift to an online-only process does not leave rural or underserved candidates behind.
Continued monitoring for new forms of fraud targeting the online system itself, similar to JAMB’s past efforts against image and fingerprint manipulation, would help keep the reform’s integrity gains from being undermined by new digital tricks.
A Small Step With a Big Potential Impact
We think this change addresses a problem Nigerian students have complained about for years: a slow, error-prone, and sometimes exploitative process just to get verified results onto their JAMB profile. Letting candidates handle this from home, with JAMB verifying results directly with WAEC, is a sensible use of technology to solve a real, longstanding headache.
We also believe this reform should be judged by how well it protects the candidates who have historically been most vulnerable to the problems it aims to fix, students who lost time and money to unreliable CBT centres, or whose academic futures were threatened by fraudulent results submitted in their name or by others.
If JAMB can extend this system smoothly to more examination bodies and keep it secure against new fraud attempts, this could become one of the more genuinely useful reforms in the Board’s recent history, a rare bureaucratic fix that Nigerian students will actually feel the benefit of.
Published by Ejoh Caleb
