The recent statement by the Minister of Education, Prof Tahir Mamman, at the JAMB’s Annual Board meeting in Abuja, to the effect that the legal minimum age for admission into Nigerian universities is 18, which has unfortunately generated tons of unnecessary controversies, is, to all intents and purposes, a mere reminder of what the law and international educational best practices have always been and it cannot therefore, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as “absurd” or “arbitrary” as now being tendentiously chorused by perennial naysayers.
Understandably, the overwhelming scepter of communal negativism against anything official or government in this country has contributed to the ongoing misguided skepticism because governments over the years have repeatedly failed the people in many key promises and policy declarations, which has led to the huge trust deficit that has been deftly deployed to undermine long-settled policy matters that should no longer be controversial in this country.
Otherwise, something as important as the well-articulated education policy, which was popularly enacted into law as far back as 1982, ought to no longer be a source of heightened anxiety, real and contrived, just to score cheap political or partisan points and, in the process, willfully misleading and confusing the people.
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What are the issues at stake? They basically center on what is the appropriate age for starting formal education in the country as is the case in all the civilized countries of the world. There is no country worth her name that does not have in place certain laws, customs and traditions regulating when and how students are admitted into their various tiers of learning, starting from the creches/kindergarten up to the universities and beyond.
I am privileged to have traveled and, indeed, taught law in countries with varied systems of higher education but one thing that is common to all is that they have well-established minimum age requirements for every level of education. These age and certificates requirements are necessary for the efficient formulation of viable policy stance necessary for the production of scholars and workers for the workplace. That is why I was shocked to hear high-profile politicians and supposed policy wonks unthinkingly enlisting in the cacophony targeted at lampooning the admission age requirement restated by the Minister. If properly appraised, the absurdity so far on the subject-matter is actually from those questioning the subsisting national education policy.
As a matter of fact, the reason why we are still talking about it today is because the government that enunciated the policy was itself lackadaisical in implementing it. Another major factor is that every administration, military and civilian, think theirs is the beginning and the end of policy formulation; they never accept the simple fact that there are certain national policies that are considered fundamental for the wellbeing of society which every government in power must sustain in order to enhance its own legitimacy but what we often see is the abundant lack of continuity in the most basic of national policies, which has in turn mean that we are perpetually stuck at the starting block as each regime seeks to make itself the originator of everything about Nigeria. So, we have become a nation rooted to the spot continually starting over and over again.
Let’s consider the fact that in olden days before the pressure of contemporary working environment and inordinate career demands forced parents to be dumping their children at “day care” centers and into all manner of preschool (refuge) homes and at whatever age, children normally attained the age of 5 or 6 before entering primary school where they then spent 6 years before proceeding to secondary schools to study for another 5 years, leading to WASC or “O” levels certificates and if they wanted to go further to the university, they would then have to undertake the grueling Advanced Level, Higher School Certificate (HSC) course for another 2 years! If you add up the years of study from primary school up to when the A/L is completed, you will arrive at nothing less than 18 years.
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We started seeing all sorts of corner-cutting and “bridging” initiatives by the universities unwittingly aided by incompetent governments that were more eager to pursue demographically targeted advantages over educational policies in the face of the acute shortage of qualified students for the newly proliferated campuses. Short-cuts to university like Schools of Basic Studies, Concessionary or Preliminary admissions system became the order of the day. Otherwise, the age-long admission requirement for universities was the GCE Advanced Level or HSC.
Soon, impatient parents started rushing and pushing their under-age kids into the universities and as a result, the standard of higher education in the country began to fall sharply up to the point where many university graduates became so deficient in the set skills and competency levels normally expected, a failure which eventually categorised them as “unemployable” graduates because, like they say, “garbage in, garbage out.”
It has become fashionable for pedagogically ignorant parents to be boasting about their under-age children who speedily graduated from universities in “flying colors,” forgetting that students need certain level of intellectual, emotional and social maturity to fully grasp the essence of a proper university education irrespective of whatever GPA that they may be graduating with.
To remedy the obvious decline in higher education, the Federal Government enacted a National Education Policy into law in 1982 which established the 6:3:3:4 scheme of education format for Nigeria. Under this policy, children required to start their formal education at the age of 6 beginning with the 6-year primary schooling; 3 years of Junior Secondary School; 3 years in Senior Secondary School, culminating in a minimum 4 years of study at the university level. Under this scheme, no normal student is expected to enter the university and matriculate before the age of 18.
This age requirement is consistent with what is in place in many parts of the world including the much-envied UK, US and European educational systems. What then is the basis of the hues and cries over it now when we all know that it was designed to make the students intellectually, emotionally and socially prepared for a meaningful university education?
There, of course, is the case for those rare and extra-ordinarily gifted children who are ready for the challenges of higher education from the cradle. There will always be occasional geniuses who must be allowed to blossom to their respective capabilities but that should not distract the nation from the overall need to produce university graduates that are, overall, prepared for the world and the needs of the labour market.
My experience as a law teacher of many years is that kids who are rushed into the law degree program by parents who just want to prove that theirs are “wonderkids” hardly grasp the factual premises of the jurisprudence they childishly cram for mechanical regurgitation during examinations. What is more, most of them do not easily appreciate why they are in the university in the first place and that is why they readily fall prey to the ubiquitous cult-membership recruiters and other bad gangs roaming the campuses.
Parents and guardians must understand that university students are expected to be adults who are legally competent to enter into valid and enforceable contracts with the university beginning with the matriculation oath-taking ritual. That is why we only have “men” and “women” hostels and not “boys” and “girls” hostels. It is a legal fact in this country a person of less than 18 years is not capable of entering into an enforceable contract unless he has an adult representing him as “guardian ad litem”. All things considered, universities all over the world are not for children.
