UTME: Parents Abusing Special Window, Registered Over 2,000 In Six Days — Registrar

The Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board(JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, said parents are misusing and abusing the ‘Exceptional Brilliant Window’ opened for candidates below the age of 16 to register for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

Oloyede, who was speaking as a guest on the Sunday edition of a socio-political programme, Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, on Channels Television, stated that some of the candidates are only 10, 11, and 12-year-olds whose parents have found crooked ways of jumping classes.

“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,” he said.

Oloyede also condemned how some parents now raise the ages of their children.

“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,” he said.

He stated that while the examination body had enforced the minimum age requirement for any students into tertiary institutions at 16, he stated that the need to introduce the below-16s to sit for the UTME was necessitated by the number of rare, exceptional students.

“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.

UTME: Parents Abusing Special Window, Registered Over 2,000 In Six Days — Registrar is first published on The Whistler Newspaper