The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Is-haq Oloyede, says the board has opened the Exceptionally Brilliant Window for candidates below 16 years old to sit for the annual Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
Oloyede, who is also a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, was a guest on the Sunday edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.
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.”
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