THERE has been so much outrage and discontentment across the country with regards to the Federal Government’s policy of attainment of 18 years of age as a key condition for University and other tertiary institutions admission in what has become the heated Age Controversy in Nigeria’s educational system. A Sage once quipped that maturity comes not with age but with the ability to accept responsibility. In the same light, it remains a time tested truism that one does not automatically become responsible on account of age. It has also been widely acknowledged that maturity is not measured solely by age but as an attitude built by experience and consciously nurtured over time. Psychological makeup has been known to be a by-product of nature’s endowment and the nurturing by societal influences where the family and the school play very vital roles. It is indeed surprising that at a time the global trend is that age has nothing to do with maturity, the Federal Government is unsettling families and educational institutions with policies that raise the age of admission into tertiary educational institutions to 18 years in the claim that it is in line with the 6-3-3-4 educational system. The position of the Federal Government is that the new policy allows students to mature both mentally and emotionally before gaining entry into the university.
The policy is considered as anachronistic and retrogressive by many parents, teachers and education stakeholders who expect that it ought to make room for the particularly gifted children who are sometimes given double promotion as a result of extraordinary academic performance. Stakeholders particularly find it incomprehensible and in fact abysmally reprehensible that the Federal Government is attempting to solve a systemic problem using age as a condition or a decoy. There are also those who are the more enraged as they begin to trace regional traits and give ethnic slants to the age policy, insisting that it is designed to check the educational advancement of children who benefit from early parental and institutional nurturing especially in the Southern part of the country. This has become a lot more worrisome as a study of top scoring students in UTME and WASC examinations has revealed that they fall within the age bracket of 15 and 17. Rather sadly, the age policy has currently put a barrier to the educational development of such bright students as it seeks to put a pause to their educational pursuit and their offence clearly put is their age. The question appears to be, why did they have their mental faculty, reasoning ability or brain power developed so early in life.
The Minister of Education, Prof Mamman Tahir on Monday, April 22, 2024 started off the whole controversy while monitoring Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination In Abuja. He practically stirred the hornet’s nest when he announced that henceforth 18 years would be the minimum age for the admission of students into tertiary institutions in Nigeria. This, he insists is in line with the 6-3-3-4 Education Policy. In the thinking of the Minister, students who gain admission into tertiary institutions at 15, 16 and 17 are immature, unsuitable and unable to manage their affairs while on campus. Lest we forget, education is in the concurrent list in the constitution. The thinking therefore is that the Federal Government should allow States to design their education policies in the light of the prevailing circumstances. In the thinking of other stakeholders, age is far from being a major issue amongst the myriad of challenges facing tertiary education in Nigeria. The Minister has even gone a step ahead to state that candidates who are below the age of 18 will henceforth not be registered to write GCE and WASC, SSS Examinations. The policy out rightly forecloses the emergence of geniuses or masterminds and institutionalises the frustration and stagnation of these gifted children and their parents as they should either put their education on hold for some two to three years or relocate to countries that make early child development a priority.
The National Assembly has said the policy will be subjected to public hearing even as the committee on Education insists it is in line with existing laws of commencement of primary school education at age 6, getting into secondary school at 12 which when added the six years of secondary education comes up to the mandatory 18 years for university admission. The National Parents Teachers Association of Nigeria, NAPTAN has however disagreed sharply with the position of the Minister describing it as a backward, anachronistic and draconian policy that is better consigned to the dustbin of history. Parents have demanded from the Minister the Kind of study carried out that validates the notion that students who gain admission into the universities at 15, 16 or 17 constitute any form of problem in the identified institutions. The appeal really is for the Federal Government to put the policy on hold but in case it must be implemented, then a five-year notification is needed to have parents and students get psychologically prepared for what is to come. Insisting on immediate implementation is draconian, repressive and reprehensible. NAPTAN insists the policy has the tendency if not capacity to exclude younger, brilliant and self-motivated students from admission into the university of their choice. Ordinarily one could have dismissed the debate on the right and appropriate age to gain admission into our universities and polytechnics by insisting that age is but a number.
The debate however acquires an additional significance in the reality of Nigeria’s socio-cultural milieu. Robert Pogue Harrison, Prof of Literature at Stanford University recently reflected on the philosophy of age, positing that Humans are heterochronic in age, that is to say that we are made up of different types of ages, biological, historical, psychological, and institutional. Ontology actually conjectures that truth reveals itself in and through the unfolding of age. This has proven in Nigeria to be culture bound and exigency determined.
How for instance do you get to explain that the same public servant who is preparing one affidavit or the other to enable him have endless years in service through downward reviews of his age is also the one who is manipulating the age of the child upward to enable him or her get admitted into the tertiary institutions. Age then becomes a matter of Statistics conveniently chosen to serve a particular purpose at each point in time not necessarily a fact of time in history in respect of one’s birthday. Encounter that 65-year-old politician who is the youth leader in his party and he would stoutly declare to you that he is a staunch youth at heart. To him age or youthfulness is in how you feel.
I still can recall how I was taken aback when a woman who had retired from public service at 60 came to ask me what her senior sister of six years’ age difference was waiting for to join the league of retirees. People around me condemned her mission which bordered on needless and unsolicited whistle blowing. Some even went ahead to dub her a household enemy. A young man of 21 was also known to have hosted invited guests to his 25th year birthday for friends and business partners to acknowledge that he is truly of age. Age therefore ends up in most cases as a number while maturity resides in the heart, finding expression in our actions and relationships. On the contrary, a number of ladies have been known to repeatedly mark their 21st birthday over and over again while awaiting a suitor. The story was told of a 68-year-old man who for some untoward reasons was still in the services of a State government. There however came this occasion in his community when colanut was being passed round and it was his turn to be served a piece of colanut but there arose some controversy when a kinsman who just retired from service at 60 insisted he had become the senior citizen and as such should be served first. The 68-year-old who was still counting warned that they were in the community square and not in any government office adding that nobody should despise his true age. And that brings us to the issue of true and official age.
One exists in the file while the other is tucked away in the corner of the heart The question really is what has age got to do with the conduct of a student on campus. While some insist the Minister was right on point others say he was struggling for an alibi for FG’s multidimensional failings in developing such a vital sector. The age controversy coming from a Minister of Education smacks of over regulation on the part of the Federal Government. In line with the policy on Varsity autonomy, Universities and infact all tertiary colleges and academic institutions should be allowed to fix their own minimum age requirement for admission purposes. And like some persons will have us believe, age is but a number and not a primary determinant of conduct.
