Awaiting N’Assembly’s Resolution on Mamman’s Retrogressive Age Limit

Nigerians are awaiting the decision of the National Assembly on the backward age limit for university admission imposed on stakeholders in the education sector by the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman to truncate the university education of young Nigerians within the ages of 15, 16 and 17, and potentially increase the number of out-of-school children in the country, Ejiofor Alike reports

Despite the enormous challenges that have crippled the public universities in Nigeria, the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman has embarked on an unpopular agenda that will truncate the university education of young Nigerians with his backward age limit policy, which he rammed down the throats of other stakeholders in the education sector.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) have been embarking on industrial actions since 2009, which disrupted the academic calendar of public universities and encouraged the proliferation of private universities as more Nigerians boycott government-owned schools.

The age limit for admission seekers has never been part of the grievances of university lecturers and the non-teaching staff.

But in this 21st Century when young Nigerians within the ages of 16 and 17 years have demonstrated exceptional academic excellence and brought fame to their countries, Mamman is obsessed with a retrogressive policy of excluding students under the age of 18 from gaining admission into universities, citing the outdated 6-3-3-4 education system introduced about 40 years ago.

Many Nigerians, especially those from a certain part of the country believe that the minister’s insistence that very brilliant Nigerians should wait at their parents’ homes for two or three years after their secondary school education before gaining admission into the universities, is a deliberate design to push their children out of school. 

Rather than being excited that young Nigerians are embracing university education, Mamman had while monitoring the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in Bwari, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) early this year, announced that “the minimum age of entry into the university is 18, but we have seen students who are 15, 16 years going in for the entrance examination.”

“Parents should be encouraged not to push their wards too much. Mostly, it is the pressure of parents that is causing this.

“We are going to look at this development because the candidates are too young to understand what the whole university education is all about.

“This is the period when children migrate from controlled to uncontrolled environments, when they are in charge of their own affairs.

“But, if they are too young, they won’t be able to manage properly. I think that is part of what we are seeing in the universities today,” he reportedly said.

Curiously, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, Senator Muntari Dandutse, had subsequently promised that his committee would come up with legislation to support this policy.

More shocking was the fact that ASUU, which had never raised the issue of age limit as part of its grievances, threw its weight behind the minister as its President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, was quoted as saying that the proposal was a welcome development.

However, young admission seekers experienced a sigh of relief when the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Senator Adeyemi Adaramodu, in an interview with a group of journalists in May this year, clarified that nothing would be done on the minimum age requirement until stakeholders in the education sector pushed for a bill.

Many were optimistic that the federal lawmakers would not succumb to the minister’s personal agenda and pass any backward bill that pegs the age of admission seekers at 18.

But without waiting for any bill, Mamman has rammed his obnoxious policy down the throats of all the stakeholders in the education sector.

Speaking at the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) 2024 policy meeting in July, Mamman insisted on the 18 years age limit for admission into universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education, with effect from 2025.

The minister claimed that the decision was already a “policy” the federal government had keyed into, insisting that even candidates seeking admission in 2024 must be 18 years old.

His statements further fuelled the suspicions of hidden motive when he suggested that aggrieved parties should approach the National Assembly to amend the policy.

If the minister actually meant well, why should he dust off what seems like a long-abandoned policy and advise aggrieved parties seeking its reversal to approach the federal lawmakers instead of allowing the policy to remain in the dustbin where he met it?

When his pronouncement that the policy would be implemented in this year’s admission was greeted with shouts of “no, no” by the crowd of education stakeholders, he gave one year of grace and agreed that the policy would take effect from 2025.

The Executive Secretary of JAMB, Professor Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede, recently gave an indication that there would be no going back on the implementation of the policy next year as he cautioned parents against falsification of age of their children and wards in an attempt to meet the 18-year minimum age requirement.

“Fortunately, the honourable minister has agreed that this year it’ll be 16. We should get our acts right and we should agree that abnormality is becoming normal,” he reportedly explained on the sideline of the presentation of the Academic and Research Excellence Award to a renowned Ilorin-based legal giant, Professor Yusuf Olaolu Ali (SAN), by the Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, Osun State.

Oloyede’s statement confirmed the fact that the policy was a personal agenda of the minister.

 Admission into the universities in many advanced countries is based on the academic achievements of the students and their capacities to cope as undergraduates, and not on archaic, retrogressive, and backward age limits.

Early this year, a 17-year-old Nigerian and member of the Class of 2023 of The Ambassadors College, Ota, Ogun State, Master Oluwafemi Ositade, secured 14 scholarships worth $3,5 million to multiple Ivy League universities in the United States, including Harvard, as well as other top-notch universities in Canada and Qatar. 

The renowned universities that extended scholarship offers to Ositade were Harvard University, Brown University, Duke University, University of Toronto Lester B Pearson Scholarship, Wesleyan University, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, University of Miami, Howard University, Stetson University, Fisk University, University of Toronto, Mississauga Campus, University of Toronto St. George Campus, University of Toronto, Scarborough Campus and Drexel University. 

With a score of 358 in the JAMB’s UTME, Ositade had ranked as the second-best in Nigeria in 2023. 

In the 2023 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), Ositade scored eight As and one B2

The National Assembly should rise to the occasion and save the university education of many other Oluwafemis before the education minister frustrates them out of school and retard their progress.

The minimum age for admission into the universities is not one of the challenges that destroyed public universities in Nigeria. There is absolutely nothing wrong when a child enters the university at 16.