Femi Opesusi, father of 19-year-old Timilehin Opesusi, who tragically took her life after receiving a controversial UTME score, has held the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) responsible for her death.
Opesusi made the statement during an emotional interview with Channels Television.
Mr. Opesusi described his late daughter as a bright student. Timilehin had reportedly scored 190 in her previous year’s JAMB exam but scored 145 in the 2025 UTME. Her father maintained that she had prepared extensively for this year’s exam.
In a heartfelt interview with Channels Television, Femi Opesusi, father of 19-year-old Timilehin Opesusi, expressed anguish over her UTME score, which he said did not reflect her true performance.
Despite his attempts to calm her, Timilehin, overwhelmed by distress, ingested a sachet of rodenticide within hours of receiving her result. She was rushed to the hospital by her sister but tragically could not be saved.
Timilehin, who lived with her elder sister in Ikorodu, Lagos, was among over 300,000 candidates affected by a “technical error” that disrupted the UTME at multiple centres across the country. According to her father, she repeatedly expressed disbelief, saying, “Daddy, this is not my result.”
“What I want is for JAMB to give me the actual result of my daughter, not the one they tampered with after her death,” he said.
Her untimely death has prompted widespread grief and concern, reigniting questions about the integrity of JAMB’s examination process. While the Board initially defended the validity of all results, JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, later admitted at a May 14 press briefing that a technical glitch compromised the scores of 379,997 candidates across 157 centres, primarily in Lagos and the South-East. “We are human; we are not perfect,” Oloyede said in a public apology.
In response to the error, JAMB commenced resit examinations on May 16 for all affected candidates.
During a recent stakeholders’ meeting, the Board observed a minute of silence in honour of Timilehin.
However, her father revealed that neither JAMB nor any government representative has reached out to the family since her passing. “I hold JAMB responsible for all of this. My daughter suffered. She prepared day in and day out for the exam,” Opesusi lamented. “JAMB has never reached out to me since her death.”
On Monday, JAMB released updated results for affected candidates in Lagos and the five South-East states. An education expert described the 2025 UTME outcomes as the best in nine years, citing improved scores among candidates who sat for the resit examination.
