Two of Nigeria’s top universities, the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, are under legal pressure over alleged irregularities in their 2025 Post-UTME results.

A law firm, F.K. Nnadi & Co., has issued pre-action notices to both institutions, accusing them of unfairly awarding very low scores to some candidates while withholding the results of others without proper explanation. According to the firm, these actions could jeopardize the admission chances of affected students.

The petitions, also copied to the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the House of Representatives Committee on Tertiary Education, demanded that the schools:

Release all withheld Post-UTME results.

Provide students access to their scripts and marking schemes.

Allow candidates accused of malpractice to defend themselves before disciplinary action.

The firm gave OAU three months and UNILAG 30 days to comply, warning that failure to do so would result in legal action at the Federal High Court, where it would seek injunctions, damages, and enforcement of candidates’ rights.

UNILAG has since denied any technical fault in its Post-UTME exercise. Its spokesperson, Adejoke Alaga-Ibraheem, explained that results flagged for malpractice were backed by “clear breaches of examination guidelines,” detected through multiple monitoring systems including video surveillance.

However, education technology expert Alex Onyia, CEO of Educare, insists the problem lies in the Post-UTME software used by both schools. He claims the platform contained bugs that wrongly flagged students for malpractice and mismatched scores, citing over 752 student complaints. Onyia has called for an independent audit of the process.

This controversy comes at a time of wider turbulence in Nigeria’s examination system. Earlier in 2025, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) admitted to glitches that disrupted results for more than 370,000 candidates, while the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) suspended its online result checker before adjusting national performance rates.

The law firm insists that transparency is key to restoring confidence:

“Direct both universities to release the withheld results of students not accused of wrongdoing and grant access to scripts and marking schemes in the interest of fairness,” it stated.

With the admission season ongoing, the outcome of this dispute could determine the future of hundreds of Nigerian students seeking university entry this year.