In spite of the controversy that has surrounded its announcement, it is clear that most Nigerians are neither asking the right questions nor is Professor Tahir Mamman’s Ministry of Education taking the right steps about implementing the 18-year admission policy into tertiary institution or sitting the School Certificate Examination(WASCE/NECO).
Without any provocation the minister two months ago chose to kick awake a sleeping dog that is best left lying down. It was as if he was feeling a little idle or ignored and so decided to court attention by opening the books to activate a largely obscure section of a policy that has essentially been seen and used as a guide or observed in the breach among those who have cared to pay it any heed.
Our admission age could only be arrived at by inference, after examining the implication of the 6-3-3-4 educational system that came into effect in the late 1980s. There is no clear section of our laws that puts the admission age at 18. The closest thing to any such legislation is the requirement by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, that a prospective applicant for university admission must at least be 16, not 18, by October 1 of the admission year. This has been the case for many years even when there have been occasional controversies about underaged applicants (14, 15 years old) who passed the matriculation exams with high grades but were denied admission.
Many made it through the eye of that age needle undetected that were just 14 or 15 in their first undergraduate year and eventually graduated as and when due. There are probably as many who graduated of these 14- or 15-year-old as also floundered and could not make it. Graduating at 18 or 19 is not necessarily a proof of genius. You need more than the ability to pass exams, especially with average grades, to demonstrate this. Many or probably most of those who say they graduated at 18, 19 or 20 fall into this category. Otherwise, the records in our universities or country in general should be telling us something different.
Tahir Mamman’s decision looked like an attempt to cause distraction from far more pressing issues of daily existence that have downgraded the quality of life of most Nigerians- inflation, high cost of living and unavailable energy; insecurity of life and property and a badly devalued currency that has defied every possible remedy deployed against it. Of all these major problems confronting the country, Nigerians couldn’t understand why the admission age issue should be the one to stir the minister. If matters of education are on the concurrent list of the Constitution, it becomes a matter of curiosity at least, if not troubling considering the military mentality at work, that the Ministry of Education would choose to implement this policy without regard to the concerns of other tiers of governance.
It is also a matter of wonder that our policy makers who insist we must at all times respect the dictates of our so-called federal system with its defective structures of governance when it comes to issues of power devolution are the same who, when it suits them, will ignore the demands of that federal system by seeking to impose a unitary-style implementation of policy on every part of the country irrespective of local peculiarities, gender demands and religious preference. These latter-day federalists have, for example, told the Chief Emeka Anyaoku-led Patriots that have been calling for a new constitution, that any amendment or general overhaul of the Constitution cannot happen without the input of both the national legislature and state legislative assemblies.
They remind everyone who cares to check that the 1999 Constitution (as Amended) leaves no other path for a major constitutional review. Anything else is, as far as they are concerned, a usurpation of the powers of our elected legislators. There appears to be some political undertones to the policy and as is to be expected, the response to it has been largely political and emotive. As with all things, the policy has both its upsides and downsides and they are not without their meeting points. In other words, implementing or interpreting that policy one way or the other of the two sides to it now does not consign us into the zero-sum situation that many are making it out to be.
The first step that a minister who is serious about the education of this country and wants a secure future for our children will take is not to be as arbitrary as Prof. Mamman when he announced that the 18-year admission/examination policy will take effect from October 2024 as he initially did. He did things the Nigerian way, which is the fast food, immediate-effect way of the military. You obey first and ask questions later. Prof. Mamman made that decision the entire business of his ministry or himself without other stakeholders’ consideration. What happened to long-term planning even if that’s all he is able to achieve for the entire period he is a minister? Did he have to wait for the uproar that followed his ill-planned announcement before changing track and shifting the implementation date from 2024 to 2025?
What would happen to those young Nigerians due for university or tertiary education admission by September/October 2024 but are less than 18 now? Stay back at home for between two to four years? And we talk of idle hands being the devil’s workshop? With banditry, kidnapping, terrorism, armed robbery, prostitution and all sorts of social crimes and vices on the rise amid millions of our school-age children being out of school, we want to keep about four million more (one million for each of the next four years, not counting those coming after them) who may never return to school in educational limbo? In a country where 12 years old are considered ripe for marriage or suborned to vote and engage in protest in some parts?
Tomorrow, we seek 21- or 22-year-old entry-level job applicants with five years’ experience in a country where a four-year course could easily go on for eight years due to lecturers’ or students’ strike? We teach parents and their wards to cheat and find ways to beat an uncaring system and pretend to enforce policies we make no plans for. No, this policy needs years to be implementable at the tertiary level. There are lots of groundwork to do. It must start first at the pre-nursery, nursery and primary levels where we must decide the age our children should begin school and strictly maintain it for the following six, seven to eight years when the first graduates of that policy will be due for secondary education.
