The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that candidates under the age of 16 won’t be considered for admission in the 2024 admissions year, a prelude to the enforcement of the 18 years for admission beginning from the 2025 admission year.

It said the decision followed the directive from the Chairman of the 2024 Tertiary Admission Policy Meeting, who is also the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, that the extant education policy of 6-3-3-4 be enforced only from the 2025 admission session.

JAMB spokesman, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, told journalists at a press conference, in Abuja, on Sunday, that the decision was extensively discussed and unanimously endorsed at the 2024 Policy Meeting chaired by the Minister of Education.

He noted that the alarming avalanche of obviously false affidavits and upsurge of doctored upward age adjustments on the National Identity Number (NIN) slips being submitted to JAMB to upgrade recorded age is dangerous, inimical and unnecessary, insisting that candidates below 16 would not be considered for admission in accordance with the decision of the 2024 Policy Meeting.

The JAMB spokesman also raised concerns about some illegalities being practised in the tertiary institutions as regards admissions and other issues around the regularization of candidates’ admissions conducted outside the approved Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS).

He said: “JAMB will no longer entertain absorption of illegal admissions through the window of “condonement of illegal admissions without registration number” which was used to absorb, for the candidates’ sake, illegal admissions that were conducted prior to 2017.”

He recalled that CAPS was introduced in 2017 to ensure accuracy, records, transparency, accountability, fairness, and equity in admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The window (for mop-up of pre-2017 unofficial/unregistered admission) has been on now for seven years and it is now being abused.

He referred to the recent discovery by JAMB of widespread and unwholesome practice whereby some institutions were colluding with candidates to falsify vital details, such as backdated year of entry and subsequent age adjustments, to utilise certificates of genuine candidates with similar names to facilitate illegal admissions to enable participation of fake candidates in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme.

“In the same vein, the attention of the Board has also been drawn to the predilection of some institutions to admit candidates outside the approved CAPS platform, and process such through the condonement of illegal admissions window to accord legitimacy,” he said.

Dr. Benjamin announced that all institutions have been directed to, within one month, disclose all candidates illegally admitted before 2017 whose records are in their system, and that any admission purportedly given before 2017 will no longer be recognised or condoned unless disclosed within the one-month window.

He encouraged institutions to comply with the directive as there will not be any further condonement of hitherto unrecorded candidates who did not even register with JAMB not to talk of sitting for any entrance examination, stressing that the move is aimed at curbing illegal admissions and falsification of records while ensuring compliance with the provisions of CAPS. (Courtesy, excluding headline, Daily Sun)

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