AYOMIDE Olamoyegun is 19 years old and she has graduated from the university. She didn’t just slither through the university like a snake does on the rock. She left a mark. She scored a cumulative grade point average of 4.66 on a scale of 5 to graduate first class from the Department of Software Engineering of Babcock University, Ilisan-Remo, Ogun State. She is surely one of many other such examples from a good number of the private universities scattered around Nigeria. Let us not go way back in time when geniuses like Chinua Achebe and Omololu Olunloyo were admitted into universities at young ages. Miss Olamoyegun’s example strikes differently and adds a different flavour to the ongoing debate about age and maturity in the Nigerian education sector. Her feat makes the matter appear red hot, looking like the metaphor of the camwood paste in the raging discussion around the new rules pronounced by Nigeria’s Minister of Education, Professor Mamman Tahir.
Our dear Education Minister, Professor Mamman is accomplished as a big player in the Nigerian legal field. Indeed, he has played so well as to be conferred with the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) title. He is in that prestigious and elite class of senior and privileged legal luminaries in Nigeria who are addressed in that mellifluous sobriquet: “Learned Silk”. For nearly ten years, he worked as the Director-General of the Nigerian Law School. He held sway at the Nigerian Law School from 2003 until 2013 when he relinquished the position. Today, Professor Tahir Mamman currently slaves for us not just as the Law School boss but as the administrator of the entire Nigerian education sector as the Honourable Minister of Education.
Minister Mamman spoke like a sole administrator recently. He reeled out rules he said would take effect from next year in the Nigerian school system. However, the rules he listed triggered major reactions. It didn’t seem like the numerous stakeholders in the Nigerian education space were consulted and properly briefed before the minister spoke. It also didn’t sound like that had happened before the markers were publicly laid by the minister. However, the rules are meant to bring that incredibly needed improvement of education in Nigeria and all that concerns it. Our SAN Minister is 70 years old. He is not too old to understand those numerous things which Nigerians are saying about the state of education in Nigeria. He is actually at such an age in which we can conveniently contend that he had seen the better days of the Nigerian education sector. It could be posited that he gave the rules based on some of the things he might have heard Nigerians, from all walks of life, say about the condition of the various levels of education in Nigeria.
So, what exactly did Prof Mamman say and what can we really infer from his answer to the question: “The age to enter university, is it 18 or 16 years?” He said: It is 18. What we did at the meeting with chairmen was to allow this year and for it to serve as a kind of notice to parents that JAMB will admit students who are below the age. But from next year, JAMB is going to insist that anybody applying to the universities in Nigeria meets the required age which is 18. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not a new policy, this is a policy that has been there for a long time.” The minister in answering the same question told us to compute the years our children are supposed to be in school, and that we would arrive at 17 and half years. “From early childcare to primary school; then to junior secondary to senior secondary and to senior secondary school, you will end up with 17 and half years; and by the time they are ready and the school year is ready for admission, that’s the age they will be ready for admission.”
Mamman is right that the policy had always been there. He is quite right that it had been in the books for a long time and in fact, we heard about it in our days at the University of Ibadan. The minister should also know that the policy has not just been outmoded, it has become so intolerably obsolete. Being a former Vice Chancellor of Baze University, is Prof Mamman insinuating that he is not proud of some of the young students that passed through him in the university while he oversaw its affairs? Would he conveniently thump his chest to deny any contention that no teenage student as brilliant and ready as Ayomide Olamoyegun of Babcock University, passed through the Baze University system under him as the Vice Chancellor? If Prof Mamman’s answer to this will be in the affirmative, it then might mean that he is sending a veiled message through the camwood metaphor earlier alluded to in this writeup. Before you ask the new wife for some camwood paste, it is wise to first check her feet if she had rubbed some of it herself. I think we should be calm and relax our eyes to be able to see and properly decode the real message in what Professor Mamman is saying. For this reason alone, those who are irked by the 18 years rule of Prof Mamman should forgive him.
To properly decipher the mind of some of our teenage students, Miss Olamoyegun explained her burning desire: “When I was 15, I had already completed my secondary education and was eager to take the next step in my academic journey. I was passionate about learning and did not see the need to wait an extra year when I felt ready to start university. Moreover, I pursued A-levels at 15 and entered Babcock University at 16. My parents recognised my determination and academic capabilities, so they supported my decision. They understood I was motivated and had a clear vision for my future, which helped them feel comfortable with me starting university early.”
The paradigm from which this Babcock University graduate spoke doesn’t appear to be the type the minister had always operated from. Otherwise, he would have thought about the differences in chronological age and the age of maturity. That is why many Nigerians are fuming that the same people who would endorse that a 13-year-old girl be given out in marriage would not allow a 16-year-old girl in a university. Nigerians are enraged because a government which watches helplessly while hordes of under-age boys work for wages, and even suffer unfair labour practices while at it, will not endorse the admission of those among the boys who qualify for higher education, into a university. It is a disturbing paradox which exhibits the utter weakness of government through its policies in this regard.
This directive that the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO) should not register candidates who are under the age of 18 will not just lead to chaos in the Nigerian school system, it will also cause serious disillusionment among the majority of the students. Most of the students who are going to resume in Senior Secondary III class in a couple of weeks are in an age bracket that would graduate before they are 18 years of age. Now the minister has ruled that schools should not register their candidates for WAEC’s General Certificate in Education (GCE) or Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSCE) and NECO respectively unless they are 18. What would then be the fate of both the schools and the children who are already primed for these examinations? And most of these candidates are students who did not jump through the window of ‘double promotion’ the minister said had eventually become ‘the door’.
It is also worrisome the speed with which the minister and the Federal Government wants this policy to be reinvigorated and effected. The rush on the part of the government presupposes that the issue of age has degenerated to a national emergency which must have caused a serious obstruction of the Nigerian education space. Is there such a glitch that needs such an urgent remediation? The minister has not said so. He should therefore meet with not just the chairmen of the governing councils of the universities, but he should call for a summit on Nigerian education with the aim of looking at all the issues, including this policy that has turned him into a sore learner. The minister would also need to consider the issue of strikes of various academic and non-academic unions in the education sector. ASUU is preparing for another bout of trouble with the government. The minister and the government know that four-year courses in Nigerian public universities are hardly ever completed in four years owing to incessant disruptions by strikes. This is one of the issues that would have serious impact on the policy.
One of the main reasons some of our children seek education overseas is ASUU strikes. The government, on its part, has not shown serious commitment to resolving the issues which lead to the perennial ASUU strikes. Mamman and her colleagues in government have their children in universities outside the shores of Nigeria while they are here speaking in inexplicable parables and creating confusing paradoxes.
The minister said, “When a window is created, Nigerians turn it into the door.” He is alluding to corruption of the system. However, why would he blame Nigerians for the rot in the Nigerian school system? Why will the blame not go to those the government gave the responsibility to supervise schools and education?
Mamman agreed that this matter is beyond just age, but he spilled his argument by insisting that “it is not actually a matter of age but the years spent at each level of education.” Then it is quite perplexing that he didn’t reckon that the school year isn’t the same as the age year, because a school session is not 12 calendar months. That is why many leave secondary school at the age of 16 or thereabouts. Or, should we say that Prof Mamman wants us all to be eating just ram simply because his father rears sheep?
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