The Federal Government has pegged the minimum admissible age for candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria 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 31st August 2025.
However, JAMB expressed concern that some institutions had violated this directive by admitting underage candidates through channels outside CAPS and collecting substantial amounts from them as tuition fees.
“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.
The Board noted that all such admissions were illegal and could not be processed through CAPS, adding that some of these 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.
“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 explained.
JAMB stated that this measure would assist institutions in better evaluating the quality of applicants and provide a standardised reference point across cohorts.
It further questioned the logic of calls to extend the validity of UTME results, noting that such an extension would raise complications regarding the comparability of scores.
By publishing ranking information, JAMB believes that candidates parading falsified scores would also be discouraged, and institutions would gain a clearer sense of the academic standing of each applicant.
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 reiterated its commitment to equity, transparency, and merit-based admissions in Nigeria’s tertiary education system.
The ongoing policy meeting, attended by vice-chancellors, registrars, and provosts of tertiary institutions nationwide, is expected to conclude with the approval of admission cut-off marks and other regulatory guidelines for the 2025 academic session.
