The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has warned tertiary institutions, especially universities to stop admitting underage children.
JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, who stated this at the opening of the seventh biennial conference of the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of State-Owned Universities in Nigeria, said admitting underage children is illegal.
The Registrar pleaded that for the sake of accountability, data protection, and integrity of the nation, the act needed to stop because anything irregular was illegal.
Oloyede cited an instance where he received a letter from an European country seeking to confirm if a student actually graduated from a particular university because she is 15 years old and applied for postgraduate course.
He noted that state-owned universities must do a lot in this situation, stressing that they are more in number than federal universities.
The registrar also said the illegal admission of diploma students needs to stop because last year, 9,000 diploma students were admitted and about 3,000 students came from a particular university.
The former Chief of Staff to the President, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, urged the pro-chancellors to make plans of action on how they could make their institutions as competent and attractive as federal and private universities.
Gambari emphasised that doing so would ensure that they were able to retain some of the best faculty and staff which attracted the best in the pool of eligible students.
Chairman of COPSUN, Senator Joshua Lidani, said that the discussion included many issues that had to do with governance in the university system.
Lidani who is the Pro-Chancellor of the Gombe State University, said there were currently several challenges confronting the university system and tertiary education generally.
He said that apart from the illegality of some acts, a huge vacuum was usually left in the administration of the institutions leading to all kinds of anomalies.
The COPSUN chairman expressed confidence that the conference can point the way forward and advice on the way stakeholders can play better and rightful role in uplifting the standards of education in the country.