By Ali Elias
The Federal Government has reaffirmed that candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions across Nigeria must be at least 16 years old.
Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, made the announcement on Tuesday during the 2025 Policy Meeting on Admissions held at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja.
The enforcement of the 16-year age limit will be carried out through the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board’s (JAMB) Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS). The system is designed to standardize admissions and ensure compliance with national education policies.
Dr. Alausa noted that efforts are being made to accommodate candidates who turn 16 on or before August 31, 2025.
In a related statement, JAMB expressed concern that some institutions continue to flout the directive by admitting underage candidates outside the CAPS platform. The Board alleged that these institutions collected substantial tuition fees from such candidates despite knowing that their admissions were invalid.
“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 warned that these admissions are illegal and cannot be processed or recognised under CAPS, adding that some cases had already resulted in legal action against defaulting institutions.
The 16-year minimum age policy follows an earlier controversy in 2024, when former Education Minister Prof. Tahir Mamman proposed raising the benchmark to 18 years—a suggestion that was met with widespread criticism from parents and educators.
Meanwhile, JAMB announced a new initiative that will see candidates’ national rankings included on their UTME result slips, starting from the 2025 examination.
The move, according to JAMB, aims to discourage the celebration of individual high scores without context, as well as to tackle the growing problem of forged results.
“To curb the menace of celebrating top scorers of UTME, candidates’ ranking (position) will be indicated on the result slip for each candidate,” the Board stated.
It explained that the ranking system will provide universities and other institutions with a better framework for assessing candidates’ performance in relation to their peers nationwide.
To illustrate, JAMB revealed that in the 2025 UTME, out of nearly 1.91 million candidates:
– A score of 370 was ranked 16th nationally,
– 320 was ranked 5,806th,
– 250 was ranked 107,819th,
– 200 was ranked 533,805th,
– 180 was ranked 948,025th,
– 140 was ranked 1,855,607th,
– 120 was ranked 1,900,872nd,
– and 100 was ranked 1,903,661st.
JAMB also addressed calls to extend the validity of UTME results beyond one year but warned that doing so would create complications, particularly when comparing scores across different examination years.
The 2025 admission policy meeting continues this week with university vice-chancellors, polytechnic rectors, and college provosts expected to finalise cut-off marks and other regulatory guidelines for the upcoming academic session.
JAMB reiterated its commitment to fairness, transparency, and merit-based admissions in Nigeria’s education system