The Federal Government is considering pegging age limit for admission seekers into tertiary institutions at 18, expressing worry over minors seeking admission in higher institutions across the country.
Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, disclosed after visiting the Kogo Computer Based Test (CBT) centre for the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and paying a courtesy call on the Registrar, Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, in Bwari, Abuja.
Speaking with reporters after the visit to the JAMB registrar, the Education Minister said underage students were mentally unprepared for the herculean tasks of university education, expressing concern that he had seen 15-year-olds writing the examination. Mamman equally blamed parents for putting undue pressure on their children to attend university at a very tender age.
“The other thing, which we noticed is the issue of those, who are applying to go to the universities. Some of them are really too young. We are going to look at this. They are too young to understand what the whole university education is all about. And that’s a stage when students migrate from the controlled and uncontrolled environment where they are in charge of their own affairs.
“If they are too young, they won’t be able to manage properly. And that accounts for some of the problems we are seeing in the universities. We are going to look at that,” he said.
The Guardian reports that although there is no legal backing for age limit requirement for university admission, most institutions peg it at age 16 in their post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) advertisements.
On what should be the minimum entry age, the minister said: “It is supposed to be from 18. That is the entry age for universities. But I have seen students of 15, 16 years old in examination centres. It is not good for them.
“And parents should be encouraged not to push their wards and children too much. It is mostly the pressure of parents that is causing this problem”. He applauded the examination body for deploying technology to perfect the process.
This, he stressed, has minimally reduced cases of examination malpractice.
“Fantastic, very seamless process. I have seen the value of technology that JAMB has been able to perfect this process here. Right from screening the students to the examination process, it’s so seamless. And the environment is very nice, comfortable for the students. And that’s how it should be, especially the use of technology in our affairs and the educational system,” he noted.
Also, the Minister of State for Education, Dr Yusuf Sununu, applauded the conduct of the 2024 UTME and the introduction of online examinations as a way of checking malpractices.
According to the minister, the introduction of the Computer Based Test (CBT) has reduced examination malpractices to the barest minimum. He said: “From what I have seen, I have seen a complete effort, most importantly to completely reduce to the barest minimum and eliminate examination malpractice. It has given the standard of what is needed to be given in an exam so that we can have objectivity and reliability of results.”
“The standard of the exam is commendable. I am not surprised that JAMB has to go outside Nigeria to conduct exams; they were in Saudi Arabia and right now the exam is also going on in Saudi Arabia,” Sununu said.
