Man narrates how daughter committed suicide over subpar 2025 UTME score
A 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) candidate committed suicide on account of her low score.
The Lagos candidate, now identified as Faith Opesusi, was said to have scored 146 out of 400 points.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) released the results for its 2025 UTME on May 9.
An analysis revealed that more than 78 per cent of candidates scored less than 200 points out of the 400 maximum obtainable points.
The metrics, believed to have signalled mass failure, spurred protests from candidates who challenged the integrity of the exam.
Oluwafemi Opesusi, Faith’s father, said his distraught daughter took a liquid substance that led to her death after checking her result.
In an interview with BBC, Oluwafemi said his 19-year-old daughter wanted to study Microbiology but the dream was cut short.
He said JAMB did not release the original result of his late daughter.
Oluwafemi said his daughter was devastated and disappointed after seeing her result.
“She had a high score in 2024 UTME. This year, she was given 146. The pain of it drove her to commit suicide,” he said.
The father said he would have tried to console his daughter if she had opened up about her trauma.
He added that the family was disappointed that her daughter had taken her own life.
On May 14, JAMB admitted that a technical error in Lagos and south-east states compromised UTME results across 157 centres.
A teary-eyed Ishaq Oloyede apologised to the affected candidates and Nigerians in a televised conference on May 14.
The JAMB registrar said the error, caused by one of its service providers, affected nearly 380,000 candidates.
These candidates, he added, will now be made to resit the examination between May 15 and May 19, 2025.
As of this reporting, JAMB has yet to directly address the Faith Opesusi case.(The Cable)