Parents have been advised by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) not to register their underage children for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
In response to a lawsuit filed by a woman named Mrs. Ifeanyi Eke against the Board for purportedly indecent text messages received to her 15-year-old daughter during her registration, JAMB Registrar Prof. Ishaq Oloyede issued the warning.
“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,” he said
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In response to claimed improper and unwanted text messages sent to her 15-year-old daughter, Mrs. Eke filed a N100 million lawsuit against JAMB and three other parties in the Federal High Court of Lagos.
However, in response to the event, Oloyede stated at a news conference on Tuesday that the Board is prepared to meet with the woman while adamantly stating that the message’s sender was not a member of its staff.
According to the Registrar, JAMB reported the event to the security authorities so they could take the proper measures, but the mother didn’t care and sued for N100 million at the child’s expense.
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.
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“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, saying that it has dealt appropriately with the centre, the reason being that it shouldn’t have allowed unauthorized 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 unauthorized 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 been screened, that centre will be deleted.
“Secondly, we have instructed the centres to stop identifying the parents of the candidates and we will take appropriate action against the candidates.
“Parents cannot destroy the career of their children because of their emotions and indiscipline,” he added.
