By Umunna Kalu

Recently, the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, raised a controversial policy issue concerning reversing the entry age for admission into universities and other tertiary institutíons in Nigeria from 16 to 18 years.

Mamman raised the contending issue during his tour of the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination centres, in Bwari, the Federal Capital Territory.

Mamman said that the Federal Government is considering the adoption of 18 years as the entry age for admission into universities and other tertiary institutions.

Mamman’s grounds for this proposal are that younger students are responsible for some of the challenges within the system. He suggested that they are not mature, unsuitable, and unable to manage their affairs.

The Minister had decried what he called the propensity of parents to pressure underaged students to write the examination.
According to him”” The 18 year bench mark is in line with the 6-3-3-4 system of education Policy.
“” The minimum age of entry is 18 but we have seen students who are 15, 16 going in for the entrance examination.

“” Parents should be encouraged not to push their wards too much. Mostly, it is the 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.”

He had argued that some of these younger students are meant to remain in the controlled spaces of their parents rather than in the vibrant university environment. These arguments most experts contend are fallacious

Already, the Academic Staff Union of Universities have lend its support to the age benchmark. The President of ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke has described it as a welcome development and wants regulators to implement existing laws to enforce the age limit. This to most critics is overregulation. The position they have àrgúed contradicts ASUU’s consistent activism for university autonomy as the age benchmark should be firmly within the purview of each university.

There is no doubt that the Nigerian tertiary education landscape is plagued with problems that demand urgent attention but pegging entry age may be the least of them.

An educationist, Dr Ossai Edmund said the proposal is a backward one and should be consigned to the dustbin.

Also there is no guarantee that the policy will succeed. In Nigeria, parents will devise unwholesome means to circumvent it, as they are doing with the age policy to enter Federal Government Colleges.

The proposed policy Ossai argued can exclude younger, brilliant, and self-motivated students from admission into the universities of their choice.

In a digitalised world, Dr Ossai noted that the policy would drag Nigeria backward, stressing that Universities compete for the best in their admissions process.

Recall that for his brilliant performance, Oluwafemi Ositade, 17, a student at a secondary school in Ota, Ogun State, has just earned a Harvard University and 17 other Ivy League scholarships in the United States, Canada, and Qatar, amounting to $3.5 million. If the policy is implemented, that means Ositade would miss the golden chance. This is not logical.

One of the ills bedevilling tertiary education in Nigeria is the lack of autonomy. It is part of Nigeria’s flawed federalism in which the centre controls the affairs of the federating units in a master-servant relationship. Consequently, the Federal Government and the National Universities Commission render the authorities of universities redundant. This is ridiculous.

Therefore, rather than micro-managing tertiary institutions, the Federal Government should allow individual universities to determine the minimum age limit of their students.

In the United Kingdom for example, each university oversees its admissions. For instance, Swansea, Southampton, and Cardiff universities admit at age 16; Kent pegs it at 17 years. While the Open University admits at 16 years or lower, Cambridge prescribes an age of 18 for some courses, including medicine. Therefore, Mamman most stakeholders contend should face the real problems affecting education in Nigeria, especially the 20.2 million out-of-school children figure.

The tertiary institutions seems bogged by shabby infrastructure and poor funding; in a dynamic world, their curricula are obsolete.There is a lecturer shortfall too.

Nigeria’s universities rank low globally. In the 2023 Webometric ranking, the University of Ibadan, which ranked first in Nigeria, is 14th in sub-Saharan Africa, 21st in Africa, and 1,138th in the world. Cairo University (521) and the University of Cape Town (237) fare better on the impact, openness, and excellence criteria.

Despite the prevalence of incessant strikes and university closures, younger graduates have ample leverage in the labour market.

The Federal Government should look within. It creates problems by establishing more universities when it cannot adequately fund the existing ones. With better funding, the institutions will thrive. This deserves priority.

So, the age limit requirement, even to majority of parents is a chasing after the shadows and must be dropped.

With advancement in technology new generation of learners have shown a propensity to adapt faster and be more open-minded.

They are able to do things faster than it took children of their age in time past.

Today’s expectation in the education sector are different from goals set in the 80s and 90s. In all, there is need to recommend constant review and upgrade of policies.