The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that exceptional candidates below the age of 16 are eligible to sit the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
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Ishaq Oloyede, registrar and chief executive officer at JAMB, made this known on Sunday, February 9, 2025 when he said that this is made possible through the newly introduced ‘Exceptionally Brilliant Window’, designed to accommodate such candidates.
Oloyede explained that the decision to allow younger candidates stemmed from the recognition of rare cases of outstanding academic excellence, while reaffirming that the board maintains a minimum age requirement of 16 for admission into tertiary institutions.
“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.
However, Oloyede criticised the growing trend of parents falsifying their children’s ages.
The former vice-chancellor of the University of Ilorin, highlighted instance where students as young as 10 to 12 years old were registered for the UTME, emphasising the concerning nature of such practices.
“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 curriculum vitaes. They want to say I am the mother of a lawyer, my child graduated at age 13,” Oloyede decried.
Recall that in November 2024, Tunji Alausa, the minister of education, announced the reduction of the minimum admission age for tertiary institutions from 18 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 and others on that.
“There will also be exceptions for gifted students. So, 18 years is not part of our policy again,” the minister said.
Tahir Mamman, the then minister of education had earlier in July 2024, declared a prohibition on admitting candidates below 18 years into the nation’s tertiary institutions.
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