UTME Mass Failure: ASUU Threatens Legal Action Against JAMB—Here’s What You Need to Know!

Due to the high failure rate in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Exam (UTME), the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has threatened to challenge the Joint Matriculation Board (JAMB).

During a press briefing in Nsukka on Wednesday, Comrade Óyibo Eze, the chairman of ASUU-UNN, revealed the information.

According to Oyibo, the massive failure, which mainly impacted applicants from the Southeast, was JAMB’s deliberate attempt to keep kids from the area from being admitted.

“Parents and members of the public have flooded my office with calls, visits, and demonstrations regarding this willful, significant failure in the 2025 JAMB exam.

If JAMB does not examine the results and award candidates their merited scores, ASUU will contest this outcome in the High Court.

“JAMB is aware that South East youngsters need to score higher in order to be admitted, whereas their counterparts in other regions of the country will need to score 120 in order to be admitted to local universities to study medicine.

“Out of 1,955,069 candidates who took the 2025 exam, over 1.5 million scored less than 200 in the JAMB recently released result. The majority of these candidates are from the Southeast and Lagos State, where many Igbos reside,” he stated.

He urged Southeast governors to take action against this injustice, which is aimed at keeping kids from the region from being admitted to the nation’s universities.

“The zone’s governors shouldn’t sit and watch JAMB play with our kids’ academic futures.”

“I have nothing against the board punishing those found guilty of exam malpractice, but JAMB shouldn’t fail all of the candidates in an exam center because of these few candidates,” he stated.

The head of ASUU declared that it was incomprehensible and unacceptable that no candidate who took the UTME in the entire University Secondary School in Nsukka received a score of 200 or above.

“This school has exceptional pupils who have achieved academic success both inside and outside of the school. Why did they all receive exam scores below 200?

“Is it sufficient to fail all other candidates who have worked extremely hard to prepare for that exam, even if JAMB finds one or two of them to have engaged in exam malpractice?” he said.

Oyibo encouraged JAMB to evaluate the results and take immediate action because the big failure had become a national problem, and if nothing urgent was done, it might spark nationwide protests.