By Daniel Otera
A storm is brewing in Nigeria’s education sector following serious allegations of systemic discrimination levelled against the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) branch. The union is threatening legal action against the examination body over what it describes as a “deliberate massive failure” in the recently released 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) results.
The Chairman of ASUU-UNN, Dr Óyibo Eze, made the accusation on Wednesday during a press briefing in Nsukka. Dr Eze expressed deep concern over what he termed a calculated attempt to marginalise candidates, particularly from the South East geopolitical zone, by manipulating their examination outcomes.
According to Dr Eze, the union had received a deluge of complaints from parents, students, and concerned members of the public since the results were announced.
“My office has been inundated with protests, calls and visits by parents and the general public on this deliberate massive failure in the 2025 JAMB examination,” he stated. “ASUU will challenge this result in High Court if JAMB fails to review the result and give candidates their merited scores.”
He alleged that the pattern of failure disproportionately affected South East candidates, further insinuating ethnic bias in the examination board’s operations.
“JAMB knows that children from the South East must score higher before they can get admission whereas their counterparts in some parts of the country will use 120 JAMB score to get admission to read medicine in universities in their area,” he said.
Dr Eze pointed to statistical data released by JAMB, which shows that out of 1,955,069 candidates who sat for the 2025 UTME, more than 1.5 million scored below 200. He emphasised that a significant percentage of these low scores came from the South East and Lagos State, which hosts a large population of Igbo residents.
The ASUU-UNN chairman did not stop at criticising JAMB. He extended his plea to political leaders from the region, calling on South East governors to urgently intervene and defend the academic interests of their constituents.
“The governors in the zone should not sit and watch JAMB toy with the academic future of our children,” he warned. “I am not against the board punishing those found guilty of exam malpractice, but JAMB should not, because of these few candidates, fail the whole candidates in an exam centre.”
Dr Eze also cited the case of University Secondary School, Nsukka a school noted for its academic excellence—as an example of the anomaly. He claimed that none of the candidates from the institution managed to score up to 200 in the UTME, a result he described as both “unbelievable and unacceptable.”
“This school has superlative students who have excelled in academics both inside and outside the school. How come all of them scored less than 200 in the exam?” he asked. “Even if JAMB discovered one or two candidates for exam malpractice, is that enough reason to fail all others who have prepared very hard for that exam?”
The ASUU-UNN chief further advised JAMB to urgently address the matter by conducting a thorough review of the results. He warned that failure to do so could spark widespread protest across the country.
“JAMB should act fast to do the needful by reviewing the result, as the massive failure has become a national issue which might attract national protest if nothing urgent was done,” he said.
NAN
