Tertiary Education Age-Limit Stone Age, Anti-Scholarship, Atiku Tackles Tinubu
Former vice president Atiku Abubakar has condemned the new education policy of President Bola Tinubu’s administration which forbids children under the age of 18 from gaining admission into tertiary institutions.
THE WHISTLER reports that the Minister of Education Prof Tahir Mamman revealed the government’s policy on Monday while monitoring the conduct of the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in Bwari, Federal Capital Territory.
The minister said, “The minimum age of entry into the University is 18, but we have seen students who are 15, and 16 years going in for the entrance examination.”
The minister’s position has been roundly condemned including education experts who said the directive will hurt Nigeria as the minister ignored key fundamentals.
Atiku in a statement on Wednesday agreed to the rising opposition declaring it’s archaic and that it “belongs in the Stone Ages.”
The former vice president said it “is an absurdity and a disincentive to scholarship,” as the “policy runs foul of the notion of delineation of responsibilities in a federal system of government such as we are practising,” as it “gives a graphic impression of how the Tinubu government behaves like a lost sailor on a high sea.”
He argued that if not “how is such anti-scholarship regulation the next logical step in the myriad of issues besetting our educational system?
“To be clear, the Nigerian constitution puts education in the concurrent list of schedules, in which the sub-national government enjoys more roles above the federal government.
“Therefore, it is extra-constitutional for the federal government to legislate on education like a decree.”
Atiku stressed that the best global standard for such regulation is to allow the sub-national governments to make respective laws or rules on education.
According to him, it is discouraging that “even while announcing this obnoxious policy, the government inadvertently said it had no plan to cater for specially gifted pupils.”
He said the “statement is an embarrassment to the body of intellectuals in the country because it portrays Nigeria as a country where gifted students are not appreciated.”
He reasoned that the “irony here is that should the federal government play any role in education, it is to set up mechanisms that will identify and grant scholarships to gifted students not minding their ages before applying for admission into tertiary institutions.
“This controversial policy belongs in the Stone Ages and should be roundly condemned by everyone who believes in intellectual freedom and accessibility,” Atiku added.
