THE Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Ishaq Oloyede, has disclosed that more than 11,553 underage candidates registered for the ongoing 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
The announcement came during an inspection of approved computer-based test centres in Lagos on Friday, where Oloyede detailed a registration surge that has already seen 782,027 candidates sign up in the past 10 days.
Oloyede said: “Now, we have registered 782,027, and 11,553 of them are underage. So, you can see that as we are registering, the system is reporting from all over the country. Out of the expected two million candidates, we’re not yet at the 14th day.
“Monday will mark our 14th day. So, in two weeks, we would have completed about half of our registration process, and by that time, we expect to have over one million candidates registered. So far, everything has been smooth.”
He noted that on Friday alone, 443 underage candidates were recorded among 18,813 registered that morning.
According to him, some parents register their children due to peer pressure.
“Today alone, we have 443 underage candidates, and out of the 18,813 registered this morning, 443 are underage. This year, we’ve introduced a system that allows us to identify and track underage candidates.
“This will help us understand their issues and even identify those who might be genuinely gifted but still underage,” he added.
The surge in underage registrations coincided with broader debates on admission age in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.
In 2024, the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, faced criticism for his initial directive to bar candidates below 18 from admission—a policy later revised to admit candidates aged 16 and above following appeals from stakeholders.
Mamman, at the 2024 admission policy meeting organised by JAMB, in Abuja on Thursday, July 18, directed JAMB and tertiary institutions to stop admitting under-18-year-old candidates into higher education programmes.
Mamman gave the order, decrying the activities of some parents, whom he said pressured their underage wards to get admission into tertiary institutions.
“JAMB is hereby instructed this year to admit only eligible students. That is those who have attained 18 years by our laws,” the minister said.
The minister emphasised that his stance is supported by Nigeria’s law governing admissions into tertiary institutions, noting that admission bodies should recognise this requirement without being directed to obey it.
His announcement sparked mixed reactions among vice-chancellors, rectors, and registrars present at the meeting, with some stakeholders present at the meeting protesting the new minimum admission age.
However, during the review of the memorandum for the same 2024 policy meeting on this year’s admissions, Mamman later called for the adoption of 16 years.
The minister agreed that candidates aged 16 and above would be admitted, acknowledging that many of these underage candidates had already taken the UTME without prior knowledge of the directive.
Usman Mustapha is a solution journalist with International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: umustapha@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M