Oloyede: Ohanaeze youths berate JAMB for failing Igbo students in S/E & Lagos

Calls for Registrar's removal

The Ohanaeze Youth Council (OYC) has berated the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for failing Igbo students in the South East of Nigeria and Lagos dominated by the Igbo ethnic group.

Ohaneze youths made the remarks in a press statement issued by OYC National President, Comrade Igboayaka .O. Igboayaka, on Tuesday, May 20, 2025.

Comrade Igboayaka further demanded that JAMB Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, be relieved of his duties.

Igboayaka also demanded a complete cancellation and rewriting of the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examinations (UTME).

OYC National Chairman, in the statement, alleged an orchestrated conspiracy by JAMB against Igbo students.

The organization insisted that the glitches the examination Board laid claim to were deliberate and mere excuses.

He stated: “The Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) should cease any calculated plan of mass failure against Igbo students, in the Southeast and Lagos State who retake the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) on 16th and 17th May 2025.

“We object on the premise that Southeast students cannot participate in a different standard of Exam on 16th/17th May 2025, while those in Sokoto, Katsina, Gombe, Kano, Kaduna etc. have taken a different simpler standard of Exam in 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) on 25th April 2025.

“In the history of Nigeria, there has been no recorded instance where students from the Northern region took a less rigorous simpler Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) while students from the Southeast took a more demanding, complex, harder, tougher and difficult examination with an outdated curriculum, as was recorded in 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) on 16th/17th May 2025 across Southeast States.”

candidates sitting for UTME/JAMB exam

JAMB had claimed that glitches were responsible for the failure of a total of 379,997 candidates from across the 157 centres, mainly in Lagos and the South-east in the 2025 UTME.

Ohanaeze Youths rejected the call by the exam body for subsequent rescheduling and rewriting of the exam to the affected students within 72 hours.

Reacting to JAMB’s woeful outing, Registrar Oloyede made public apology and admitted the error from the Board.

Subsequently, Igboayaka condemned JAMB over the scheduled re-sitting of the exam within 72 hours.

He argued that the 72-hour notice was insufficient time and that parents would have to incur extra cost in preparing their children for the exam.

He gave the current economic situation of the country as the premise of his argument.

However, JAMB proceeded with the impromptu exam despite public opposition.

Igboayaka accused Oloyede of deliberate cause of widespread failure among Igbo students.

He stated that OYC conducted an investigation and got feedback from students who took the JAMB exam on Friday, May 16th, and Saturday, May 17.

According to him, the conclusion of the investigation revealed that the questions were 100% tougher, harder, and more difficult.

It showed that it was with an outdated curriculum unrelated to the modern school curriculum of UTME.

UTME, it could be noted, is an exam taken by all students seeking admission into Nigerian tertiary institutions.

In a related development, OYC raised concerns over the JAMB examination retaken on May 16 and May 17.

It insisted that given the ‘disturbing’ reports and feedback from students across Southeast States and Lagos, there was a conspiracy.

This conspiracy, it says, is against Igbo students.

Igboayaka posited that the Oloyede-led JAMB conspired to cause mass failure among Igbo students retaking the 2025 UTME.

This, he said, was achieved, using outdated curriculum JAMB questions.

OYC called on JAMB to restore its integrity by cancelling the entire 2025 UTME nationwide and administering a uniform question to all Nigerian students seeking admission to tertiary institutions in 2025.

The statement continued:

“The Ndigbo people have faced unprecedented marginalization and intolerable victimization in Nigeria, with a separable legal standard, policy, or procedure employed in matters related to them in Nigeria.

“As a result of the same victimization, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the leader if the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), is being subjected to an unlawful, illegal and unconstitutional trial in Nigeria, without precedent in recorded history, while South East governors and other political office holders stay aloof and watch.

“The silence of South East Governors and National Assembly members over the 2025 JAMB victimization of Ndigbo and other injustices, sociopolitical victimization raises questions of complicity.

“In the imminent moment, South East governors, former governors, past and present National Assembly members, and all politicians will be compelled to face the music and experience the same fate as Haitian politicians, who faced the wrath of  the Haitian people due to the rising tide of provocative thoughts, anger, and aggression brewing among Igbo youth, which will ultimately erupt into an unstoppable revolution against politicians in Igboland,” Igboayaka added.

OYC, therefore, called on Southeast Governors and National Assembly members from the Southeast to collectively exert effort to counteract this seeming victimization on Igbo students.

It said this educational disadvantage supposedly engineered by JAMB Registrar must be checked, so that there would not be continued social injustice against Ndigbo.

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