Victoria Mgbanwa
The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has raised concerns over the increasing number of underage candidates registering for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), alleging that some parents manipulate their children’s ages to gain early admission into tertiary institutions.
Speaking as a guest on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a Channels Television program, Oloyede lamented that some parents resort to fraudulent means, including falsifying birth records, to register children as young as 10 for the UTME.
“I’m 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.” Oloyede said.
The JAMB registrar expressed concern that some parents are more focused on using their children’s early academic achievements as a status symbol rather than considering their emotional and intellectual readiness for higher education.
“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,’” he remarked.
While JAMB has enforced a minimum age requirement of 16 for university admissions, Oloyede acknowledged that rare, exceptionally brilliant students below this age could now apply through a special “Exceptionally Brilliant Window.”
This development follows the Federal Government’s decision to set the official admission age benchmark at 16 years, reversing an earlier policy that placed it at 18. In November 2024, the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, clarified that while 16 years remains the standard, provisions would be made for gifted students to gain admission earlier.
Oloyede, however, maintained that such cases are “one in a million” and cautioned parents against manipulating the system, emphasizing that children should be allowed to develop at a natural academic pace.
