UNN ASUU Accuses JAMB of targeting Southeast students after Mass UTME Failure

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) branch, has accused the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB)of deliberately failing candidates from the South-East in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

Chairman of ASUU-UNN, Dr. Oyibo Eze, made the allegation while addressing journalists in Nsukka on Wednesday. He said the union was considering legal action against JAMB if the board fails to review the UTME results and award candidates their deserved scores.

 

READ ALSO : Nigerians React as Northern Destroy Tinubu’s 2027 campaign billboard (video)

 

Eze claimed that the 2025 UTME results showed a disproportionate number of failures among candidates from the South-East and Lagos State, where a large number of Igbo people reside.

He disclosed, “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. ASUU will challenge this result in the High Court if JAMB fails to review the result and give candidates their merited scores. 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 a 120 JAMB score to get admission to read medicine in universities in their area.

“In the JAMB recently released result, out of 1,955,069 candidates who sat for the 2025 examination, over 1.5 million candidates scored less than 200 and majority of these are from the South-East and Lagos State where many Igbo reside.’’

He called on governors from the South-East to rise and challenge the injustice targeted towards preventing children from the zone from gaining admission into higher institutions in the country.

He stated, “The governors in the zone should not sit and watch JAMB toy with the academic future of our children. 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.’’

The ASUU chief stressed that it was unacceptable that in the whole University Secondary School, Nsukka, no candidate that sat for the exam scored up to 200 in the UTME.

He added, “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. 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.”

Eze warned that the issue could spark a national protest if urgent steps are not taken, and called on JAMB to urgently review the 2025 UTME results.