The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has given permission to exceptionally brilliant candidates below 16 years to sit for its annual Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
Is-haq Oloyede, the registrar of the board, spoke on Inside Sources, a Sunday news programme on Channels TV.
He said, “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.
“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, affidavit 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.”
Recently, JAMB introduced a trial-testing mock examination to serve underage candidates from 2025.
“This window, according to the director, is necessary as any candidate who would not be 16 years old as of 30th September 2025 would not be eligible to sit the 2025 UTME,” JAMB’s director of finance and accounts, Mufutau Bello said in a statement.
“They can, however, participate in the mock UTME as a hands-on experience before their full participation once they come of age.”
Bello said candidates must specify the type of e-PIN they require at the point of purchase of their UTME application documents, as there would be no refund after purchase.
He said there would be four categories of e-PINs vending for the exercise depending on the interest and financial capability of individual candidates.
These include the “Mock Only Trial Testing” for underage candidates at N3,500, the Direct Entry application at N5,700, the UTME only without mock-UTME at N7,200, and UTME with mock-UTME at N8,700.
