A private institution, Gregory University, Uturu, in Abia State, has offered Ekele Franklin, the 15-year-old boy who emerged the overall best candidate in the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination (UTME), an admission.
Franklin scored 347 in the UTME.
Ishaq Oloyede, the registrar of the Joint Admission 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 because of his age.
However, the Chancellor of Gregory University, Gregory Ibe, has directed the university to offer “immediate” admission, as well as tuition-free scholarship to Franklin, the university spokesperson, Ogbonnaya Ogwo, said in a statement made available to online medium Premium Times, Sunday afternoon.
Gregory University has also 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.
Meanwhile Ibe, a professor, has appealed for the removal of age-limitation in the admission process in the Nigerian university system, the statement said.
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 Ibe urged 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.
