Thousands of students who wrote the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination are preparing to sue the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, following claims of technical issues and missing exam questions.
The planned lawsuit comes after JAMB announced that over 1.5 million out of the 1.9 million candidates who sat for the exam scored below 200 marks out of a possible 400. The results, released on Friday, have caused worry across the country.
While the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, said the low scores showed that JAMB was serious about fighting exam malpractice, many candidates and parents say JAMB’s systems failed during the test.
On Sunday, an education advocate and Chief Executive Officer of Educare, Alex Onyia, said legal action would begin on Monday at the Federal High Court.
“Right now, we have 8,391 students who have sent in complaints about problems during the exam,” Onyia said on X (formerly Twitter). “There’s enough evidence to prove that JAMB’s system didn’t work well and it caused harm to these students.”
He added, “The students are asking JAMB to show them their full results, including what they got wrong, the correct answers, and a way to challenge any mistakes. These are students’ futures we are talking about.”
One student who wrote the exam at a CBT centre in Maitama, Abuja, told *The PUNCH* that her Use of English questions were incomplete.
“I raised the alarm during the exam. I wasn’t the only one. Later, I saw that I scored 170. But JAMB has not said anything about the missing questions,” she said.
Another candidate who sat the exam on April 26 said she was shocked when she saw her result.
“Last year I got 287. This year I scored 173. Many others who wrote on the same day said their English questions were incomplete. I don’t believe this result belongs to me,” she said.
A parent also spoke out, saying, “We are asking for a remark. These students are brilliant and don’t deserve to be scoring below 200. JAMB must explain what happened. It can’t just be ignored.”
Despite all the complaints, JAMB has not yet responded directly to the issues raised. Efforts to reach the board’s spokesperson, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, were not successful at the time of filing this report.
