The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said that it should not be blamed that the University of Lagos’ age stipulation disallows the highest scorer in the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), Ezeunala Franklin, from getting admitted.
15-year-old Franklin scored 347 in the 2019 exercise and picked UNILAG as his first choice, which has 16 years as its minimum age for admission.
JAMB said in its latest weekly bulletin made available on Sunday to The State Online that university regulations on admission were sacrosanct and could not be flouted by the board or by candidates.
The board noted that while it was commendable that Franklin emerged the best, his “emergence should not be an excuse to flout the rules.”
The board said, “It is obvious that no nation has enough spaces for every candidate aspiring for tertiary education, hence the need to define parameters to ensure that equity and fairness are engendered in the admission exercise.”
JAMB stressed that “The Board should not be blamed for the age stipulation as it stated explicitly in it’s Integrated Brochure and Syllabus System (IBASS) which is an instructional material on syllabus and requirements for admission. The responsibility of reading the instructions contained therein should not be that of the Board but of the candidates and the public.”