Nigeria’s Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced that the majority of underage candidates who sat for the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) will not have access to their scores.
Speaking at a press briefing, JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, revealed that out of 41,027 underage candidates who registered, only 467 met the minimum benchmark required for exceptionally gifted students. The rest will see “underperformed” when they try to check their results.
“These 467 are now being processed for the remaining stages of assessment,” Prof Oloyede said. “The rest did not meet the threshold and will not see their scores.”
The examination board had allowed underage candidates — those younger than the standard minimum age of 16 — to register under a special category for gifted students, but only on the condition that they would face consequences if they failed to meet high performance standards.
JAMB’s data shows that fewer than 1.2% of these candidates reached the required score of 320 or above. Nearly half of the underage candidates scored below 200, undermining their claims of being academically exceptional.
Prof Oloyede also disclosed that 50 underage candidates were linked to a cheating ring, accused of trying to obtain live question papers or inflate their results through fraudulent means.
One candidate, who scored above 320, is currently under investigation for what the board described as “finger fraud.”
In general, the UTME results showed that 39.69% of all candidates scored between 160 and 199, while 30.69% scored between 200 and 249.
The Nigerian Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, has backed JAMB’s enforcement of the 16-year minimum age policy for university entry. Although there were earlier proposals to raise the age to 18 starting in 2025, these plans have been suspended.
“The board gave exceptionally gifted candidates a chance to prove themselves, but the rules were clear from the beginning,” Prof Oloyede added.
This move underscores Nigeria’s effort to ensure that students admitted to universities are both academically and emotionally mature enough to handle higher education.