The day I registered for JAMB felt like stepping into a battlefield. The whole country seemed to be preparing for the same war. Everywhere I turned, people whispered about cut-off marks, study centers, miracle centers, and "expo." Some believed the exam was too hard to pass honestly. Some laughed and said: "Nobody gets high scores unless they cheat."
But I knew cheating wasn't for me. I had fought too many silent wars — against loneliness, against failure, against myself. I told myself: "If I win this, I'll win it my own way."👀👀
From that day, my house became a training camp. My table was crowded with textbooks — Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English — each one marked with sticky notes and underlined in red pen. I made a timetable so strict it scared even me. Morning was for theory, afternoon for practice questions, night for memorization, and dawn for revisions. Sleep became a stranger.
Sometimes my mother walked into my room at 2 a.m. and said softly,
"Aisha, you will kill yourself like this."
But I shook my head and whispered, "Mama, I must pass. I don't have another choice."
The weight of expectation pressed hard on my chest. Neighbors would ask, "When is your JAMB?" Their eyes carried silent judgment, as if they were already calculating whether I would fail or succeed. I heard the whispers: "She's always reading, let's see if it pays off." I wanted to prove them wrong.
When the exam day finally came, my stomach felt like it was filled with stones. I wore my uniform neatly, pinned my examination slip to my chest, and carried only the essentials: pencil, eraser, pen. As I entered the exam hall, the air was tense. Some students were muttering last-minute formulas. Others prayed with their heads bowed, lips trembling. A few looked careless, laughing as if it were just another day.
I sat down, the computer screen glowing before me. The questions appeared, and for a moment, my mind went blank. My heart thudded loudly in my ears. I closed my eyes, whispered: "Ya Allah, help me. Don't let my sleepless nights be in vain."
And then, like a flood, everything returned. The formulas I had written a hundred times, the diagrams I had drawn until my fingers hurt, the words I had memorized. My pen raced across the paper, my hands steady, my heart still pounding.
The hours passed quickly. When the invigilator finally said, "Time up!" I felt both relief and fear. Relief that it was over, fear that maybe I hadn't done enough.
The waiting period was torture. Days stretched into weeks. Every time someone mentioned JAMB results, my chest tightened. I checked the website again and again, refreshing even when I knew the results weren't out yet. At night, I dreamed of failure — of scoring 120, of my mother crying, of my enemies laughing. I woke up sweating, whispering prayers until sleep claimed me again.
And then, one afternoon, the results came.
I held my breath as I typed my registration number into the portal. My hands shook so badly I could barely press the keys. For a moment, the page froze, and my heart almost stopped. Then the numbers appeared.
I had passed.
Not just passed — I had soared.
Tears filled my eyes. I covered my mouth to stop the sobs from escaping. All the sleepless nights, the nosebleeds, the headaches, the loneliness — they had not been in vain. I ran to my mother, waving the printed result in the air. She looked at me, her eyes wide, then she hugged me tightly.
"Aisha," she whispered, her voice breaking, "you have done it. You have made me proud."
News spread quickly. Neighbors who had doubted me began to smile and say, "We knew she would do well." But I remembered their whispers, their doubts. I kept my smile small, but inside, I burned with pride. I had fought the JAMB battle and won.
But this was only the beginning. Passing JAMB opened the door to a new world — the university. A place where competition was fiercer, challenges were greater, and my true rival was waiting: Mohammed.