Some students studying in computer centre | File Image
The federal government of Nigeria has pegged the minimum admissible age for candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions at 16 years.
Minister of Education Tunji Alausa announced this on Tuesday during the 2025 Policy Meeting on Admissions, held at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre in Abuja.
The 16-year age requirement will be enforced through its Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), with efforts made to accommodate candidates who would turn 16 by August 31, 2025.
However, JAMB expressed concern that some institutions had violated the directive by admitting underage candidates through channels outside CAPS and collecting substantial amounts from them as tuition fees.
Also read: JAMB sets 150 as cut-off mark for varsities
“The Board implemented the 16-year admissible age on its CAPS platform and even bent backwards to accommodate candidates who would be 16 as of August 31, 2025.
“However, some institutions admitted candidates who were not up to the admissible age of 16 outside CAPS and even collected huge sums of money from them as tuition fees,” JAMB stated.
The Board noted that all such admissions were illegal and could not be processed through CAPS, adding that some of the cases had led to litigation against the offending institutions.
The 16-year minimum admission age comes after last year’s controversy, when former Education Minister, Prof. Tahir Mamman, faced backlash from stakeholders over his attempt to raise the benchmark to 18, a move many said was criticised.
In a related development, JAMB announced that beginning with the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), each candidate’s result slip will now include their national ranking among peers.
The initiative, according to the Board, is aimed at discouraging the celebration of high UTME scores in isolation and curbing the spread of fake scores.
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