… Vows to Enforce Rule via CAPS
The Federal Government has officially fixed 16 years as the minimum age requirement for candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions across Nigeria.
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 in Abuja.
The age limit will be enforced via JAMB’s Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), with a grace period for candidates turning 16 on or before August 31, 2025.
Despite this policy, JAMB raised concerns over continued violations by some institutions, accusing them of admitting underage candidates outside CAPS and collecting substantial tuition fees from them.
“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 31st August 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.
Such admissions, the board warned, are illegal and will not be recognised, adding that some of these cases have already led to legal action.
This comes in the wake of controversy last year, when former Education Minister Tahir Mamman’s proposal to raise the minimum admission age to 18 was met with widespread backlash.
In another major update, JAMB announced that starting from the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), candidates’ result slips will include their national ranking among all test-takers. This move, the board said, is aimed at discouraging the celebration of high UTME scores in isolation and curbing the spread of fake results.
“To curb the menace of celebrating top scorers of UTME, candidates’ ranking (position) will be indicated on the result slip,” JAMB explained.
The board believes this change will improve transparency and give institutions a better sense of each candidate’s academic standing. It also dismissed suggestions to extend the validity of UTME scores, saying such a move would make it difficult to compare scores across years.
For context, the Board revealed that in the 2025 UTME, out of a total of 1,905,539 candidates, a score of 370 is ranked 16th, 320 is ranked 5,806th, 250 is ranked 107,819th, 200 is ranked 533,805th, 180 is ranked 948,025th, 140 is ranked 1,855,607th, 120 is ranked 1,900,872nd, while 100 is ranked 1,903,661st.
JAMB reaffirmed its commitment to equity, transparency, and merit-based admissions.
The ongoing policy meeting, attended by vice-chancellors, registrars, and provosts nationwide, is expected to finalize key guidelines for the 2025/2026 academic session.
