The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has issued a stern warning to parents against enrolling minors for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), as reported by Okay.ng.
The cautionary statement comes in response to a lawsuit filed by Mrs. Ifeanyi Eke against JAMB and three others. Mrs. Eke alleges that her 15-year-old daughter received inappropriate text messages during the UTME registration process.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, addressed the issue during an interview on Tuesday, emphasizing that the Board is ready to engage with Mrs. Eke. He clarified that the sender of the messages was not a JAMB staff but rather a co-student, an undergraduate at a university.
Prof. Oloyede revealed that JAMB reported the incident to security agencies, but Mrs. Eke proceeded with the lawsuit, seeking N100 million in damages. The Registrar questioned the readiness of a 15-year-old for university education, considering the current educational requirements.
“The person is not our staff, he is not even a staff of the centre, he is a co-student. He is just like a candidate, an undergraduate in one of the Universities,” he said.
“And talking about our data, nobody has access to our data. The person got the information from the phone of the underage girl.
“How was your girl of 15 years ready for University now? If she is law abiding as she claimed. The law today is that you must spend six years before primary school, six years in primary school and six years in secondary school. By that time, you are 18.
“But when you reduce three years, you must have cut corners to make a 15-year-old child ready for university education.
“We will meet her in court, it is for the court to decide whether she deserves that money.”
The JAMB Registrar maintained that the person got the telephone number of the victim at the center because they had a form to fill, saying that it has dealt appropriately with the center.
He continued, “even the centers do not have access to our database, the person must have collected the number while interacting with her at the center.
“We dealt with the center on negligence, for allowing unauthorized persons to have access to where these candidates were. And we are urging parents to allow their children to mature before registering for UTME.”
“We are now saying that any center that allows a parent to get near to where the candidates are being screened, that centre will be deleted.
“Parents cannot destroy the career of their children because of their emotions and indiscipline,” he added.
