The Federal Government has banned underage children from partaking in the National Common Entrance Examination for admission into the Unity Schools across the country.

It also directed the National Examination Council, NECO, to put stringent measures in place to prevent underage persons from registering for the examination, including making birth certificates mandatory as a registration requirement.

This was announced on Saturday by David Andrew Adejo, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja.

A total of 72,821 candidates sat for the examination on Saturday nationwide.

Adejo noted that candidates should have attained at least 12 years before admission into secondary school.

The Permanent Secretary monitored the conduct of the 2023 Common Entrance Examination into the 110 Federal Government Colleges across the federation, at both the Federal Government Girls College, Bwari, and Government Day Secondary School, Bwari, in FCT.

He expressed displeasure over the number of underage persons participating in the examination.

“This year, I have advice for parents, and I beg you, take this advice to any single home you know. We are killing our children by allowing underage children to write the common entrance examination.

“Let our children get to appropriate age before writing this exam and we are going to make sure NECO put in place appropriate checks. We didn’t want to get to where we will say bring birth certificate but that is the stage we are going to now. In registering also upload the child’s birth certificate, so that at our own end, we are able to cut some of these things,” he said.