The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) branch, has threatened to take legal action against the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) over what it described as massive failure in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
The Chairman of ASUU-UNN, Comrade Óyibo Eze, made this known during a press briefing in Nsukka on Wednesday.
According to him, the mass failure, which predominantly affected candidates from the South East, appeared to be a deliberate strategy by JAMB to deny children from the region access to university education.
“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 said.
“ASUU will challenge this result in the High Court if JAMB fails to review the result and award candidates their rightful scores.”
Eze criticised what he described as the discriminatory nature of university admissions across regions, stating that while students from the South East often need to score higher marks, others are admitted with much lower scores for competitive courses like medicine.
“In the recently released JAMB result, out of 1,955,069 candidates who sat for the 2025 examination, over 1.5 million scored less than 200. A majority of these are from the South East and Lagos State, where many Igbos reside,” he said.
He urged governors of South East states to take a stand against what he called systemic injustice aimed at excluding children from the region from higher education opportunities.
“The governors in the zone should not sit and watch JAMB toy with the academic future of our children,” he said.
“I am not against the board punishing those found guilty of exam malpractice, but JAMB should not, because of these few candidates, fail all others in an exam centre.”
Eze expressed disbelief that none of the candidates from University Secondary School, Nsukka, scored up to 200 in the UTME, despite the school’s academic reputation.
“This school has superlative students who have excelled academically both within and outside the school. How come all of them scored below 200?” he asked.
“Even if JAMB discovered one or two candidates involved in exam malpractice, is that enough reason to fail all others who worked hard for the exam?”
He urged JAMB to promptly review the results, warning that the situation could escalate into a nationwide protest if not addressed.
(NAN)