Mamman’s Retrogressive Age Limit for University Admission

Ejiofor Alike reports that it amounts to chasing shadows for the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, to propose a backward and retrogressive age limit to exclude young and brilliant Nigerians from admission into universities when he should be worried by protracted challenges that disrupt the academic calendar of public universities in Nigeria

In an era when 16-17 years old students have demonstrated exceptional academic brilliance and brought fame to their families and countries, Nigeria’s Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, is fixated on a retrogressive and backward policy of excluding young and brilliant Nigerians from admission into universities.

More worrisome is the fact that the education minister is proposing this archaic age limit policy at a time public universities in the country are bedeviled with protracted challenges, which have disrupted their academic calendar and turned four-year degree courses into six-year programmes.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) had embarked on an eight-month industrial action in 2022 to press home some of its demands, which included a better welfare package.

It was on October 14, 2022, that ASUU withdrew its eight-month-old industrial action, and directed that all universities should be reopened on October 17, 2022.

The union suspended the industrial action on the grounds that the federal government should abide by the tenets of the new resolutions reached.

Following ASUU’s industrial action that lasted for four months in 2009, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s administration signed an agreement with the union, which was referred to as the FG/ASUU 2009 Memorandum of Action (MOA).

However, the failure of successive administrations to implement the 2009 agreement led to subsequent strikes over the years.

While the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari had invoked a ‘No Work, No Pay policy’ against the unions for their eight months industrial action, President Bola Tinubu last October approved the release of four of the eight months withheld salaries.

The president also removed the universities from the controversial Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) in line with ASUU’s demand.

While the issues that caused the eight-month action remain largely unresolved, attention has been shifted to the eight months withheld salaries.

The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) had expressed displeasure over the exclusion of their members in the payment of withheld salaries, insisting that the government should extend the same gesture to their members. 

ASUU had also in February threatened that it might embark on industrial action again if the federal government failed to release the N170 billion in the 2023 budget allocated for universities’ revitalisation and also address other pressing issues.

The union identified some of the lingering issues to include: Non-injection of revitalisation funds as agreed and also appropriated for in the 2023 budget, the proliferation of both federal and state universities without financial support, the prolonged delay in the renegotiation of their 2009 agreement, and the continuous use of “deceptive IPPIS” as a payment platform.

Others, according to the union, are the continuous delay in the payment of their Earned Academic Allowances, demand for university autonomy, the continuous use of Treasury Single Account (TSA) for university operations, the non-full payment of their eight-month withheld salaries, the non-recall of ASUU officials sacked five years ago at the Lagos State University (LASU), and the non-release of the university’s white paper on the 2021 Visitation Panel.

None of the challenges that disrupted the calendar of public universities over the years was related to the age of students admitted into the universities.

A serious education minister should focus on how to resolve these protracted challenges, which past administrations had failed to resolve, instead of proposing a backward age limit to exclude young Nigerians from accessing university education.  

Mamman had late last month while monitoring the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in Bwari, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), insisted that “the minimum age of entry into the university is 18, but we have seen students who are 15, 16 years going in for the entrance examination.”

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

“This is the period when children migrate from controlled to uncontrolled environments, when they are in charge of their own affairs.

“But, if they are too young, they won’t be able to manage properly. I think that is part of what we are seeing in the universities today,” he reportedly said.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, Senator Muntari Dandutse, was subsequently quoted as saying that his committee would come up with a legislation to support 18 years as entry limit for admission into tertiary educa­tional institutions.

Lawmakers and their collaborators who want to increase the number of out-of-school children by denying young Nigerians university education should be told that there are more pressing challenges that require urgent legislation to save the country’s education system.

The minister and his allies should be told that the age of students is not part of the problems of the universities.

It is curious that the same ASUU, which has been clamouring for the autonomy of the universities, has thrown its weight behind Mamman’s unprogressive proposal that seeks to usurp the powers of each university to determine the age limit of its students.

ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, had reportedly described the proposition as a welcome development.

The minister’s proposal is archaic, retrogressive, backward, condemnable and stands condemned. In many advanced countries, admission into the universities is based on the academic achievements of the students and their perceived capacities to cope as undergraduates.

Last month, a 17-year-old Nigerian and member of the Class of 2023 of The Ambassadors College, Ota, Ogun State, Master Oluwafemi Ositade, secured full scholarships worth $3,5 million to multiple Ivy League universities in the United States, including Harvard, as well as other top-notch universities in Canada and Qatar. 

Ositade received 14 scholarships from renowned institutions nine of which are full-ride scholarships – covering tuition, accommodation, allowance and all other student’s expenses.

The universities that have extended scholarship offers to Ositade are Harvard University, Brown University, Duke University, University of Toronto Lester B Pearson Scholarship, Wesleyan University, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, University of Miami, Howard University, Stetson University, Fisk University, University of Toronto, Mississauga Campus, University of Toronto St. George Campus, University of Toronto, Scarborough Campus and Drexel University. 

In the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), with a score of 358, he ranked as the second-best in Nigeria in 2023. 

In the 2023 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), Ositade boasts of eight As and one B2

Nigerians should not allow the education minister and his allies to drag the education of young Nigerians backward and deny many other Oluwafemis in the country the opportunities to display their academic brilliance and win accolades that promote the image of Nigeria.