The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) chapter at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) has threatened legal action against the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) over what it describes as deliberate mass failures in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

ASUU-UNN Chairman, Comrade Óyibo Eze, made this known during a press briefing in Nsukka on Wednesday, alleging that the mass failures disproportionately affected candidates from the South-East region.

"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," Eze stated.

"ASUU will challenge this result in a High Court if JAMB fails to review the result and give candidates their merited scores," he warned.

According to the ASUU chairman, the examination body's results showed that out of 1,955,069 candidates who sat for the 2025 examination, over 1.5 million scored less than 200 points, with the majority being from the South-East and Lagos State, where many Igbos reside.

Eze highlighted what he termed as regional disparities in university admission requirements, claiming: "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 study medicine in universities in their area."

The union leader called on South-East governors to challenge what he described as "an injustice targeted at preventing children from the zone from gaining admission into higher institutions in the country."

"The governors in the zone should not sit and watch JAMB toy with the academic future of our children," he urged.

While acknowledging that exam malpractice should be punished, Eze argued that JAMB should not penalize all candidates in an examination center because of the actions of a few.

He expressed disbelief that no candidate from the University Secondary School, Nsukka, scored up to 200 in the UTME, calling the situation "unbelievable and unacceptable."

The ASUU chairman advised JAMB to urgently review the results, warning that the mass failure had become a national issue that might trigger nationwide protests if not addressed promptly.

JAMB had previously acknowledged that 379,997 candidates were affected by glitches in the 2025 UTME results, though the examination body has not yet responded to ASUU's specific allegations regarding regional disparities in the results.