By Joke Kujenya
ON A grim Monday in Lagos, 19-year-old Timilehin swallowed rat poison and died.
Days later, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) admitted to errors in its 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) saying that released results contained some technical errors.
Too late, Faith had gone too early fearing that the results she saw had ruined her future. So sad, JAMB announced resit exams to correct errors.
In her inbox, an admission message landed the very day she took her last breath.
But Timilehin wasn’t killed by a test. She was failed by a culture that equates test scores with worth, that forces dream into narrow corridors of “success,” and that punishes silence.
Sadly, Timilehin was not a name on a spreadsheet. She was a young girl from Abeokuta, living quietly in Ikorodu area of Lagos with her sister.
A neighbour described her as “gentle and humble.” She aspired to study microbiology.
She had done better the previous year, but this time scored 190—enough to qualify for many courses, but maybe not her dream one.
Faith had assumed that in the eyes of an unforgiving system, that drop felt like a death sentence. And for Timilehin, tragically, it became one.
Yet days later, after mounting pressure and nationwide complaints, JAMB scheduled a resit to correct systemic errors.
My question now is, how many other young people, we must now ask, are hanging on a thread of self-worth tied to the blind spots of flawed algorithms?
For years, this is a kind of quiet development that has been an epidemic of academic despair plaguing Nigerian youths. Statistics are not available to buttress this. We only read about them and everyone passes on. Pity of a nation.
However, this is not just about JAMB.
This is about a nation where success is reduced to a single number and a single path: university. Where children are coached not in resilience but in silence.
Where failure is not treated as a phase but as a flaw. Where a parent’s love, a teacher’s pride, and a community’s esteem often hinge on a line of digits printed on a result slip.
Timilehin didn’t die because she scored 190. She died because she felt 190 was all she was. Because her fear spoke louder than any adult voice telling her she had options.
Because nobody told her that she could fail and still be loved, still be valuable, still be heard.
Promoting Mental Health Lessons
We need to talk about the mental health of Nigerian students—not just when tragedy strikes, but as part of daily life.
Timilehin reportedly begged her sister for palm oil in a panic, hoping to counter the poison.
Her confession came too late.
But it speaks volumes. She wanted help. She needed to be heard. And like many, she was ignored until the system announced an update that mocked her death with cruel timing.
We Are All Complicit
This isn’t JAMB’s burden alone. It belongs to schools that rank students publicly like livestock.
To parents who weaponise comparison. To churches and religious houses that preach prosperity but stay silent on depression.
To communities that call a young girl “gentle” after she’s dead but never asked if she was okay while alive.
It is ours, too—those of us who scroll past tragic headlines without asking what we’re doing to protect the next Timilehin.
Why isn’t counselling a mandatory part of secondary school?
Why do we mock therapy and mental health as foreign indulgences? Why do we wait until obituaries to recognise brilliance?
Let Us Pause to Act
Had someone told Timilehin that 190 was not the end, that life unfolds in curves not straight lines, would she still be here?
I can only guess maybe. Maybe not. But what if the next child hears that message?
We owe Timilehin more than a trending hashtag. We owe her action. We owe her reform. We owe her a society that teaches our children that their value is not conditional.
To students reading this: Your result is a number, not your name.
To parents: Your child is a life, not a report card.
To JAMB and all examination bodies: You hold futures in your servers. Errors cost lives.
To all of us: Silence kills. Speak. Ask. Listen. Love loudly.
Because Timilehin should be starting school this year, not becoming a symbol of what happens when a system forgets its children are human.
