• As 201,867 UTME candidates register first week
• Board flays parents for registering 5,000 underage candidates
Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is set to enforce the 16-year minimum entry age requirement into tertiary institutions, The Guardian can authoritatively report.
This is even as the examination body has announced that 201,867 candidates successfully registered for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) within the first week of registration.
In its weekly bulletin, published yesterday, the board disclosed that the enforcement of minimum entry age requirement into tertiary institutions was, however, with a proviso that exceptional candidates might enjoy waivers, provided they score 80 per cent in the four examinations stated in its advertisement.
The bulletin noted that JAMB Registrar, Prof Is-haq Oloyede, stated this at a meeting with critical stakeholders, comprising Chief External Examiners (CEEs), Chief Technical Advisors (CTAs) and Equal Opportunity Group (EOG).
Other stakeholders included Virtues Vanguard, Peace Monitors, High-Power Opinion Leaders, Civil Society and Mass Media, General Monitors, Roving Group and the Bwari Call Centre.
The meeting with the stakeholders is to prepare for the 2025 UTME registration exercise, review past performances and discuss issues regarding the upcoming 2025 UTME.
The registrar pointed out that the national minimum admissible age is 16, and any candidate below 16 years by September 2025, would not be considered for admission.
He said that any exceptional candidate must be exceptional not through mere words, but in all ramifications, such that either in the UTME, WAEC, post-UTME or the GCE O/level, he must score at least 80 per cent.
MEANWHILE, Oloyede has disclosed that no fewer than 4,997 underage candidates have, so far, registered for the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
This also disclosed that the board had, by yesterday, registered 420,674 candidates for its May 2025/2026 exams, targeting two million for the exercise.
Speaking with journalists in Ilorin yesterday, after monitoring some Computer Based Test (CBT) centres, the registrar flayed parents who aid underage wards to register for the board’s examination, describing them as selfish.
He stated that as of yesterday, the number of underage registrants (candidates below 16 years) stood at 4,997, condemning what he described as “selfish parents” craving to make their children’s educational pursuits their (parents’) victory medal.
“You can see how we’re deceiving ourselves in this country. Before now, the maximum figure of underage candidates used to be about 300. But in a situation when we’ve just started and in five days, we have a total number of 4,996 underage registrants. By the end of today, there will be more than 5,000.
“Many of these parents have misdirected their children. They want to use their children’s early education to decorate their CVs,” he added.
