The University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has announced its intention to take legal action against the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), alleging systemic discrimination in the recently released 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) results.
Addressing journalists in Nsukka on Wednesday, the ASUU-UNN Chairman, Comrade Oyibo Eze, claimed that the outcome of the examination was deliberately skewed to the disadvantage of candidates from the South-East. He described the mass failure as a calculated move by JAMB to undermine the admission chances of students from the region.
“My office has been overwhelmed with protests, calls, and visits from distraught parents and concerned members of the public regarding what we see as a deliberate manipulation of the 2025 JAMB results,” Eze said. “ASUU will not hesitate to challenge this injustice in court if JAMB refuses to conduct a thorough review and award candidates the scores they duly earned.”
Eze emphasized that students from the South-East typically face higher cut-off marks to secure university admission, compared to counterparts from other regions. He alleged that while students in some areas gain admission to study medicine with scores as low as 120, their peers from the South-East must exceed 250 to stand a chance.
Citing data from the examination board, he said over 1.5 million of the 1,955,069 candidates who sat for the exam scored below 200, with a significant number from the South-East and Lagos State—areas with a high population of Igbo students.
The union leader called on governors in the South-East to urgently intervene, describing the situation as a grave injustice. “The governors of our region must not sit idly by while JAMB jeopardizes the future of our children. We are not against punishing cases of examination malpractice, but this must not translate into collective punishment for innocent candidates.”
He also expressed shock over the performance of students at the University Secondary School, Nsukka, noting that not a single candidate scored above 200. “This is a school with an outstanding academic record. It is inconceivable that all its students could have performed so poorly. Even if malpractice occurred in isolated cases, is that justification enough to fail everyone?”
Eze urged JAMB to urgently address what he described as a national embarrassment and warned that failure to do so could trigger widespread protests. “This issue has moved beyond a regional concern. It now threatens the credibility of our educational system and the trust of Nigerian youths in public institutions.”
