The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has given the condition on which candidates below age 16 sitting for its Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination can be given admission.
The Registrar of JAMB, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, gave the condition during a meeting with key stakeholders in the education sector.
The report, contained in the JAMB Bulletin for the week, revealed that among the key stakeholders at the meeting were Chief External Examiners, Chief Technical Advisors, and members of the Equal Opportunity Group.
Others were Virtues Vanguard, Peace Monitors, HighPower Opinion Leaders, Civil Society and Mass Media, General Monitors, Roving Group and Bwari Call Centre.
At the meeting, which was to prepare for the 2025 UTME registration, review past performances and discuss issues regarding the upcoming 2025 UTME, Professor Oloyede pointed out that the national minimum admissible age is 16.
As such, he said any candidate below 16 years by September 2025 would not be considered for admission.
He was quoted to have said by the bulletin: “This is about complying with the law, age has a lot to do with maturity in terms of what you do.
“Age can’t be discarded.
“Otherwise, you wouldn’t be prescribing that before you can become a Local Government Chairman, you must have attained a certain age or even a child of 5 or 10 years could aspire to that office.
“Biological age has a lot to do with the development of the intelligence.
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“There are so many things that have been said, but there are exceptions to the rule, and you must allow for such exceptions.
“The Honourable Minister of Education mentioned it clearly when he assumed office that the minimum age for admission would be 16, but we are also aware that there are gifted children and they are few.
“These gifted children can’t be dismissed like that.
“We will have to identify them and allow them to take the exam.
“Now, the question is about identifying them.
“There are so many criteria we’ll look at if you’re under 16 and you’re exceptional.
“First, your records should show that you’re exceptional.
“If you take UTME, for instance, and you score 200 out of 400, how do you call yourself an exceptional candidate, but if you score 80%, that is giving us a signal that: ‘Oh, this person is really exceptional.’”
Oloyede said that any exceptional candidate must be exceptional not through mere words but in all ramifications such that either in the UTME, West African Senior School Certificate Examination, post-UTME, or General Certificate of Education O Level, he or she must score at least 80 percent, which translates to a score of 320 out of 400 in the UTME.
The Registrar also lamented that private universities encourage underage admission and, in most cases, 80 percent of their intakes end up being migrated to other programmes owing to poor standing.
He further noted that the Board is not unaware of these sharp practices that parents perpetrate to alter the age of their wards for the purpose of admission and on graduation, they apply for a reduction of that same age to enable their wards undergo the one-year mandatory service of the National Youth Service Corps.
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