Exceptionally gifted children who are below 16 years will be allowed to take the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), its Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, has said.
Oloyede said the board would identify the few gifted students and allow them to take the university entrance examination.
But such candidate, the registrar said, must score at least 80 per cent in UTME, the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC), post-UTME, or the General Certificate Examination (GCE) Ordinary Level.
Oloyede announced this at a meeting with critical stakeholders comprising Chief External Examiners (CEEs), Chief Technical Advisors (CTAs) and Equal Opportunity Group (EOG). Others included Virtues Vanguard, Peace Monitors, High-Power Opinion Leaders, civil society and mass media, general monitors, a roving group and the Bwari Call Centre.
In a bulletin issued on Monday in Abuja by the board’s Public Communication Advisor, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, the registrar insisted that JAMB would enforce the minimum entry age requirement into tertiary institutions.
“This is, however, with a proviso that exceptional candidates may enjoy waivers, even if they are below 16 years, provided they score 80 per cent in the four examinations stated in our advertisement,” the bulletin said.
According to the bulletin, the meeting with the stakeholders was meant to prepare for this year’s UTME registration, review past performances, and discuss issues about the upcoming examination.
Oloyede explained that the national minimum admissible age remains 16, adding that any candidates below 16 years by September would not be considered for admission.
He added: “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 five or 10 years could aspire to that office.
“Biological age has a lot to do with the development of the intellect. 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 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 will 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 per cent, that is giving us a signal that, ‘Oh, this person is really exceptional.’”
The registrar also lamented that private universities encourage underage admission and, in most cases, 80 per cent 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 (NYSC).
Also, JAMB has said it would continue to make the UTME forms free for candidates with disabilities who have made five O’ Level Credits.
It said the free UTME application forms regime started last year and has cushioned the financial burden on this category of candidates and greatly improved their access to tertiary education.
Oloyede also said JAMB had, in the last five days, registered over 420,674 candidates for the UTME.
Addressing reporters in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, after monitoring some CBT centres in the state capital, the JAMB boss said 32,435 candidates registered yesterday alone for the examination.
He added that 124,632 candidates had entered for the mock JAMB exam, putting the number of trial-testing candidates at 331 so far.
Oloyede said the examination body was targeting 2 million candidates for the examination.
The JAMB registrar put the number of underage registrants (candidates who would be below 16 years by October) at 4,997 as at yesterday.
He berated those he called selfish parents for allowing underage children to register for the UTME in order to make their children’s educational pursuits a victory medal.
“You can see how we’re deceiving ourselves in this country. Before, the maximum figure would be about 300. We are in a situation where we just started in five days and we have a total number of 4,996 underage registrants. By the end of today, they 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,” Oloyede said.
Also yesterday, Oloyede said JAMB had sanctioned six CBT centres for alleged blank registration.
But he did not give the locations of or details about the sanctioned CBT centres.
The registrar, who announced this yesterday in Ilorin while touring some CBT centres in the state, said the six affected centres committed the act in preparation for examination malpractices.
“We identified six CBT centres engaged in blank registration, shortly after we began the online JAMB registration. So, we sanctioned them and put them on suspension for this week. We called them to a meeting where they all apologised for what they did.
“Initially, we wanted to give them two weeks suspension but realised that the candidates would suffer more, instead of the CBT centres.
“JAMB decided to identify the workers of the institutions that committed the offence and blacklist them. Those blacklisted will never, at any time, be involved in JAMB activities, either at CBT centres or when they become lecturers or vice-chancellors.
“This means that the six people who did the act are under punishment directly because all their details have been known and put down in the black list,” he said.
Oloyede also said the autonomy of public universities would be better achieved if the National Universities Commission (NUC) is allowed to manage the budgets of tertiary institutions, besides its role as the regulator that accredits courses in schools.
The JAMB registrar spoke as a guest on the Sunday edition of “Inside Sources with Laolu Akande,” a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.
Oloyeded said: “We can still re-engineer the situation to have the things we need. We need to look at the funding mechanism. The National Universities Commission (NUC), for example, should be left alone to run the universities. Hold the National Universities Commission responsible for the management of the universities.
“I was Chairman of the Committee of Vice Chancellors and I was involved in re-organising and retooling of the National Universities Commission. When the NUC was in charge, things were done well. I strongly believe that the autonomy that we are talking about for our universities can be better achieved if we allow the NUC to coordinate the affair.
“Now, every university goes to the National Assembly for their budget and for their defence. But the more you can pull the weight, the more will determine.”
He said when the NUC managed the budget of universities, there was the Universities Annual Review System which looked at how many candidates universities had across disciplines and used that to determine the next year’s budget.
