The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has warned parents against enrolling minors in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede stated this while reacting to a suit filed by one Mrs. Ifeanyi Eke, against the Board, after inappropriate text messages were sent to her 15-year-old daughter by an adult man at a JAMB CBT centre during her registration.
Recall that earlier this year, Mrs Eke went on X to reveal that the phone number her daughter provided during her JAMB registration was noted down by one of the young men at the centre and he later began sending inappropriate messages to the number, thinking he was chatting with the 15-year-old girl.
Mrs. Eke has filed a N100m suit against JAMB and three others before the Federal High Court in Lagos over alleged unsolicited and inappropriate text messages sent to her 15-year-old daughter.
Subsequently, in an interview with the press on Tuesday, March 12, Oloyede said the Board is ready to meet with the woman. He maintained that the sender of the message was not its staff.
The Registrar further stated that since the incident happened, JAMB reported to the security agencies to take appropriate action but the woman did not care, and sued JAMB for N100 million.
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 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 boss maintained that the person got the telephone number of the victim at the center because they had a form to fill, saying that it had 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.