The Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board, JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has disclosed that “exceptional” students below the age of 16 can register for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, as the board had opened the Exceptionally Brilliant Window for such candidates.
He stated that, while the examination body had set a minimum age of 16 for all students entering higher institutions, the need for under-16s to appear for the UTME was necessary by the number of exceptional individuals.
The JAMB registrar, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, revealed this while appearing as a guest on Channels Television’s Sunday episode of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a sociopolitical program.
“In Nigeria, there are many brilliant students; we have so many excellent people. We are enforcing the 16-year minimum entry into tertiary institutions, but some people are saying there are exceptional students. Yes, there are exceptional students, but they are just one in a million.
“We are saying 16 years is the minimum, but if you know you are exceptional, register for exceptional candidacy—that is, you are less than 16 years old and exceptional,” he said.
The JAMB registrar criticised parents for inflating their children’s ages, citing a situation where kids aged 10 to 12 registered for the UTME.
“I’m surprised, just from Monday to now, over 2,000 have registered in the whole country. Some of them are 10, 11, and 12-year-olds whose parents have found crooked ways of jumping classes.
“Normal children cannot grow at a rate higher than their biological age. What parents are now doing is increasing the age of their children; they are doing everything, affidavits of age and everything.
“The parents want to use the children to decorate their CVs. They want to say I am the mother of a lawyer; my child graduated at age 13,” Oloyede lamented.
In November 2024, Dr. Tunji Alausa, the Minister of Education, announced the reversal of the 18-year admission benchmark for tertiary institutions to 16 years.
“We will not be going forward with the 18-year admission benchmark. We will go with 16 years, and we are going to meet with the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) and others on that.
“There will also be exceptions for gifted students. So, 18 years is not part of our policy again,” he said.
The former Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, in July 2024, announced a restriction on admissions for candidates under the age of 18 into tertiary institutions in the country.
