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By Tony Eke

A handful of public policies envisaged to impact the larger interest of our society hardly follow a predictable pattern as seen in well-ordered climes. It’s a feature of Nigeria’s progressive underdevelopment in many spheres. Just when we thought that debates on the entry age into university had been settled as at last April, the Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, has exhumed the issue to our consternation. This time around, he has announced that from next year only Nigerians who are 18 years and above would be eligible to take the West African Examination Council, Senior Secondary School Certificate, and the University Matriculation Examination(UTME).

Stakeholders were indeed taken aback by the Minister’s extension of the entry age limit to the certificate examinations prospective candidates must pass in preparation for university education. The befuddling aspect is the temporary obstruction of the ambitious paths of young Nigerians to improve their quests for a better life through educational pursuits. Of course, the probing reactions of Nigerians evidence their concern about the implications of the restrictive policy.

A perspective to the new policy is conveyed by the Minister’s concern over the depth of emotional intelligence of candidates below eighteen years. He argues that the extant 6-3-3-4 system of education sanctions 18 years as the entry age into university and similar institutions. He is of the opinion that a large number of the under-18 students are too young to cope in a university campus, being the first time most of them would be leaving their parents’ homes. In essence, he advises our children to stay back at home for additional two years after working hard to pass their senior school certificate examination at 16.

Yes, the reasons put forward by the Minister seem good, but they are not superlative enough to stop brilliant teenagers that have performed exceptionally in two vital examinations needed to advance their ambitions. What’s at stake is the necessity of subordinating the future growth of our children to a policy which, as it were, is harmful to prospective undergraduates and the larger interest of our society. It’s self-evident if we juxtapose the basis of adopting a restrictive policy with the inevitable consequences in the education sector, particularly at the tertiary level.

The aspect pertaining to emotional intelligence as gleaned from the Minister’s announcement is as fluid as any other human behavioural pattern. We just cannot dismiss a large number of teenagers who are under-18 as lacking such a psychological attribute to weather the challenges of studentship as well as navigate challenges they relating to social intercourses on campus. Whatever they may lack as young students can be learned from periodic counselling programmes each university should mount after the customary orientation exercise for freshmen. The assertion of the futurist Alvin Toffler 50 years ago that a good life would require an ability to “…learn, unlearn, and relearn…” is not lost on us.

A major criticism against the policy is its attempt to create an unacceptable uniformity of entry age for persons with different skills and innate endowments. The policy might be suitable for a regimented or an ultra-conservative society where the government seeks to tailor educational pursuits of the citizens to an end or to regulate admission process to induce a parity of growth among the components of a geopolitical entity. Legitimizing such a proposal in Nigeria will, however, be fraught with suspicions because of the divergent developmental course of of the Southern and Northern parts of Nigeria. As reflected in variation of height and other inheritable characteristics, the differences among humans include dissimilar attainments of excellence in educational pursuits.

A scenario that I encountered while growing up in the 1980s, which was hinged on the contrastive experience of twins whose parents lived in our neighbourhood, may help to illustrate this point of view. Those twins and I attended the same secondary school and took the senior certificate examination together in June 1986, but the elder twin failed woefully compared to the younger one who made two As and six Bs. Their contrasting performance shocked us then as teenagers, but as the years rolled on, we became more knowledgeable of certain psychological factors.

What makes the proposition unpopular lies with its utter disregard of the intelligent quotient of the Gen Z, who, unlike their parents that make up the Gen X, are propelled by the phenomenal improvement of technology and its concomitant birth of the Global System of Mobile Communication(GSM). As parents, we have indeed attained greater maturity on account of age and diverse experiences, but our children are better placed to attain greater heights in education than us for obvious reasons. As I was piecing my thought on Friday, I read a pleasant news item about a Chicago teenager, Dorothy John Tillman, who’s credited with a rare feat of bagging a doctoral degree at 17, making her the youngest doctorate holder in the world ! Yet, our own Minister of Education is keen on keeping our children at home until they are 18 years before entering the university!!

Though the idea of increasing the admission age is a backward development, it cannot be interrogated and condemned in isolation without looking at the earlier increment of duration of few courses at the undergraduate level many years ago. Until the early 1990s or thereabouts, law programme particularly took four and three years for ordinary level and direct entry respectively. It’s, however, doubtful if that additional year had considerably improved the content and quality of our law graduates vis-a-vis their contemporaries from those universities of ex-British dependencies with a heritage of common law.

It is not in Nigeria’s interest to entertain the policy proposition let alone adopt it for implementation from 2025 as it’s not a major hindrance to the education sector at the present time. In case the Minister is seemingly less busy, he is advised to put on his thinking cap. Doing so will enable him to proffer solutions that revolve around rejuvenating the University system through curriculum review, increased funding as being championed by the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU), and ameliorating the economic hardship faced by students, who, like our compatriots, are mired in poverty of worst dimension in decades.

*Tony Eke, a journalist based in Asaba, Delta State, can be reached via tonek6819@gmail.com or on 08035504896(text only).