Parents and guardians have been urged by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to refrain from enlisting underaged candidates for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, as it hammered on the importance of compliance with age requirements.
Prof Ishaq Oloyede, the Registrar of JAMB, delivered the cautionary message in response to a lawsuit initiated by Mrs. Ifeanyi Eke, wherein she accused the Board of sending unsuitable text messages to her 15-year-old daughter during the registration process.
Fabian Benjamin, the spokesperson for the Board, disclosed this in a statement released on Wednesday in Abuja.
Eke lodged a N100 million lawsuit against JAMB and three others at the Federal High Court in Lagos, citing unsolicited and inappropriate text messages sent to her 15-year-old daughter as the basis for her legal action.
Oloyede, upon hearing about the incident, conveyed the Board’s readiness to engage in dialogue with the woman, reaffirming that the sender of the message was not employed by the Board.
The Registrar said since the incident happened, JAMB reported to security agencies to take appropriate action but the woman did not care, suing for N100 million at the expense of the child.
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He said, “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
“And talking about our data, nobody has access to our data. The person got the information from the phone of the underage girl.
“How did your girl of 15 years get 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 boss maintained that the person got the telephone number of the victim at the centre because they had a form to fill out, saying that it had dealt appropriately with the centre, the reason being that it shouldn’t have allowed unauthorised persons on the premises.
He continued, “Even if the centres do not have access to our database, the person must have collected the number while interacting with her at the centre
“We dealt with the centre on negligence, for allowing unauthorised persons to have access to where these candidates were. And we are urging parents to allow their children to be mature before registering for UTME.
“We are now saying that any centre that allows a parent to get near to where the candidates are being screened, that centre will be deleted.
He stated that secondly, they had instructed the centers to cease identifying the parents of the candidates and they would take appropriate action against the candidates.
He emphasized that parents could not destroy the career of their children due to their emotions and indiscipline.