A Nigerian law firm, F.K. Nnadi and Co., has threatened to sue the University of Lagos (UNILAG), and the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, over alleged irregularities in their 2025 Post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (Post-UTME).
In separate pre-action notices signed by Kene Nnadi and addressed to the two universities, the firm accused them of awarding unjustifiably low scores and withholding the results of some candidates without explanation.
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It warned that such actions jeopardise the admission chances of many applicants.
The law firm has also written petitions to the House of Representatives and the National Universities Commission (NUC), demanding intervention.
The notices and petitions were shared by Alex Onyia, the chief executive officer of Educare, a software solution for schools, who himself has repeatedly threatened to sue the universities for the alleged infractions.
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UNILAG has denied the allegations, insisting all cases flagged for malpractice followed ‘clear violations of established examination guidelines.’
The spokesperson for OAU, Abiodun Olarewaju, has yet to respond to PREMIUM TIMES’ enquiry and request for comments on whether the university is aware of the concerns and if it has received the pre-action notice.
Post-UTME concerns
In a series of tweets, Mr Onyia accused both institutions of using the same software for the Post-UTME and that it had a major bug that wrongly flagged candidates for malpractice and mismatched scores for others.
“UNILAG, OAU and UI are toiling with the destinies of young Nigerians,” he wrote in one tweet. “If nothing is done quickly, we will take up legal action against them. There was a major bug and glitch with the Web Test software that affected the students.”
Mr Onyia said he had compiled 752 reports from candidates allegedly affected by the glitch.
He has also proposed a free and independent audit for any of the willing universities.
Earlier this year, Mr Onyia raised similar concerns after the UTME results were released.
He was proven right after the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), which administers the UTME, bowed to public pressure to review the results and found there were glitches, prompting an apology and rescheduling of the Computer-Based Test (CBT) for affected candidates.
Pre-action notice, petitions
In the pre-action notice dated 11 September and sent separately to the universities, the law firm is requesting that the candidates or an independent third party be granted access to their Post-UTME answer scripts and the marking scheme used, to verify the assessment.
It is also requesting the release of the withheld Post-UTME results.
It also requested that candidates flagged for malpractice be afforded a proper, fair hearing, with the opportunity to defend themselves before any punitive decision is taken against them.
While the law firm issued a three-month notice for OAU to comply with its request, it issued 30 days to UNILAG.
If the universities fail to meet the requests within the time frame, the law firm said it would institute legal actions against the institutions at a Federal High Court “to enforce our clients’ fundamental rights and seek appropriate remedies, including but not limited to declaratory reliefs, order of mandamus, injunctions and damages, without further recourse to you.”
However, UNILAG has denied that a system or technical glitch affected the candidates flagged for malpractice.
In a statement by its spokesperson, Adejoke Alaga-Ibraheem, the university said the cases flagged were the result of clear violations of established examination guidelines.
“These detections followed the use of multiple monitoring mechanisms, including secure video surveillance, deployed to ensure the integrity of the screening process,” the statement said.
Call for intervention
The law firm has also petitioned the Executive Secretary of the NUC, Abdullahi Ribadu, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, through the Chairperson of the House Committee on Tertiary Education and Services, Miriam Onuoha.
In the petitions, the law firm called for an investigation into the conduct of the 2025 Post-UTME examinations at UNILAG and OAU.
It requested that the universities be mandated to accord fair hearing to all students flagged for malpractice before any punitive action is taken against them.
It also asked that the NUC issue clear policy guidelines to all Nigerian universities to ensure that Post-UTME examinations are conducted with fairness, accountability and due process.
“Direct both universities to release the withheld results of students who have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
“Ensure that affected students are granted access to their answer scripts and the marking scheme used, in the interest of transparency,” the petition reads.
A trying year for national examinations
This year, two national examinations have suffered ‘glitches’ that affected the results of Nigerian students, inadvertently eroding trust in the examination bodies.
When JAMB released the 2025 UTME results in May, it was instantly met with grumblings as some candidates insisted that they performed better than what their scores revealed.
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After initially maintaining that their scores reflected their performance, JAMB bowed to pressure and reviewed the results.
The review showed that a glitch affected over 370,000 candidates, prompting JAMB to reschedule the UTME for them.
However, discontent lingers as other candidates in the regions JAMB said were unaffected also claimed to have performed better than their allotted scores.
Later in the year, days after it released the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) briefly suspended the result checker and asked candidates to recheck their results after it discovered technical issues in the result.
WAEC’s review of the WASSCE results and subsequent release of the corrected results pushed performance from 38 per cent to 62 per cent.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian government has announced a full transition of the Senior School Certificate Examinations (SSCE) to CBT.
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