UTME 2019: JAMB Best Candidate Gets Lifeline
A private university, Gregory University, Uturu, in Abia State, has offered the 15-year-old boy who emerged the overall best candidate in the Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination (UTME) 2019, Ekele Franklin a straight admission.
NAIJAPARRY reports that Franklin – who scored 347 in the UTME – could be denied admission into his first choice university – University of Lagos (UNILAG) – because of age.
Prof Is-haq Oloyede, the registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), who mentioned Franklin’s score while announcing the release of this year’s UTME results, said the teenager, who is from Imo State, may not be offered admission due to his age.
The Chancellor of Gregory University, Prof Gregory Ibe, has directed the university to offer “immediate” admission, as well as a tuition-free scholarship to Franklin, the university spokesperson, Ogbonnaya Ogwo, says in a statement made available to the press on Sunday afternoon.
Also, Gregory University has offered admission and scholarship to Emmanuel Chidebube, a 16-year-old boy from Abia, who came second with a score of 346 in the UTME.
Prof Ibe appeals for the removal of age-limitation in the admission process in the Nigerian university system, the statement says.
Such limitation, the chancellor said, is a “stumbling block placed on the way of specially gifted children” in the country.
The courses the two teenagers want to study at the university are unknown for now.
But Prof Ibe urges the parents of the two teenagers to go ahead and commence their registration in any programme of their choice in the university.
Gregory University, named after a Catholic Pope, was founded in 2012.
The university, according to information on its website, has eight colleges, which includes medicine and health sciences, engineering, environmental sciences, agriculture, natural and applied sciences, and a college of social and management sciences.
Others are law and humanities.
Gregory University, on its website, says its vision “is to be a world-renowned university noted for the high quality of its academic and research programme as well as its professionals, practical and entrepreneurial capacity development”.