The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, has warned that strict penalties will be enforced for underage candidates in the ongoing 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) registration.
Speaking to reporters on Friday while monitoring the registration process at various centers in Lagos, Oloyede revealed that out of the 780,202 candidates registered so far, 11,512 are underage.
He noted that while JAMB had initially allowed exceptionally brilliant candidates below 16 years to register, the privilege is now being abused.
Oloyede said: “We will impose some other penalty on them, that it will have been better for them to have stayed for their time, because they are going to waste their money.
This is the second week, the tenth day of the registration and we have registered 780,202, but surprisingly 11,512 of them are underage.
When you are expecting 30-40, you can see the deceit. 11,512 are indicated as of today, even today alone.
Today alone we have 443 underage alone today and this morning we have registered 18,813 so far and out of the 18,813, 443 of them are underage and that’s part of the introduction this year that we could have those who are underage, we could see what their problems, we could pick from among them those who are sincerely underage and gifted, not people who are just, it has become a common thing now simply because their mother had no time for them and enrolled them underage in primary school and so on and did some funny things to get them to SS2, some of them they buy certificates and so on, that’s what some of the parents do.”
He said sọ far the registration is giving on seamlessly and there are no plans for extension.
“It [extension] can never happen, because there is no problem, students are registering, and we are registering daily, more than what we had budgeted to, we had planned for, we are surpassing the target, so for me, these students are going to universities.
“This is the first time that I will be registering 80,000 plus, yesterday we registered close to 100,000 across the country, so we budgeted for 60,000 per day, that’s what we use in our planning, but from the third day, we started 80,000, 90,000 per day, so which means we will finish long before the time, because we started Monday before the last, and today we are just still on Friday.
“By now we have 782,000 plus, out of about 2 million we expect, and we are not up to 14th day, it is on Monday that will be our 14th day, so two weeks will be on Monday, so we still have Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, before you can say we are two weeks into our five weeks, and by that time we will be over 1 million, so what else do we expect, it has been smooth,” he said.
