Admission: UNILAG may waive 16 year age limit for best UTME candidate

It appears that the University of Lagos, Akoka, will,  this year; waive the 16 year age restriction for undergraduate admission in favour of the candidate who scored the highest mark in this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), Master Ezenala Ekene Franklin who is 15-year-old.

Franklin, a student of Meiran Community High School, Lagos and from Imo State, scored 347 out of the obtainable 400 marks in the mandatory unified entrance exam, being conducted by the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board (JAMB) and picked UNILAG as the University of the first choice.

But our correspondent, on Monday, gathered that the case of exceptional academic brilliant students starting with the 15-year old Franklin is seriously being looked into by the university for special and possible admission arrangement.

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of UNILAG, in charge of academics and research, Prof Oluwole Familoni, in an exclusive conversation, reaffirmed that, by policy and principle, UNILAG does not admit students who are below 16 years for any of its undergraduate (let alone postgraduate)  courses and therefore wondered why some students who do not meet the age requirement would still go ahead to apply to the university.

He said such was the case of Franklin and also wondered why people want to blackmail UNILAG for its policy of not admitting underaged.

Even at that, he pointed out, it is not only UTME result that determines admission.

“There are other requirements that students must have to fulfil such as secondary school certificates and all that and therefore there is nothing like direct admission for UTME candidates,” he stressed.