Like a conquered people who have been gagged to the point of inconsequence, we have maintained a stoic silence over the recent pronouncements, by those who should know, about the age for admission of Nigerian children into the Nigerian universities.
The feeling of conquest stems from the fact that only recently, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) concluded examinations and released the results of those who will go into the battlefield to contest for the limited space in the available universities in Nigeria, for the 2024/2025 academic session in what could turn out to be a war of attrition.
Nigeria’s Education Minister, Tahir Mamman, a professor who was born in 1954 and graduated with a Law degree from the University of Maiduguri 29 years later in 1983, came out recently to inform Nigerians that only those who have attained the age of 18 years will be offered admission into Nigerian universities. It is not particularly clear if the Honourable Minister meant only universities in particular or he was referring to all institutions that the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board serves.
If he meant only the universities, then there are the polytechnics and other specialised institutions which JAMB serves to soak up the “rejects” of the universities. If his opinion bothers on all institutions above the secondary school system as currently constituted in Nigeria, then there is a bigger fight ahead, even now that this house seems too cold because when the people of Igbanke in Orhionmwon Local Government Area of Edo State say that ogba’nkiti e’nwe ihi’ororo, they are positing that the quiet person is in deep reflection and contemplation of the next line of action and apparently waiting for the iron to be hot to know when to strike.
We can wave off the minister’s opinion to our collective chagrin. He is a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria where policy summersault is the rule rather than the exception, most of the time. He is a member of the Federal Executive Council where major decisions about what happens in Nigeria are taken. He superintends over the ministry to which the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is an appendage so even if horizontally he has the same status as the registrar of JAMB, both being professors in Nigerian universities, vertically, he supervises the Board so loyalty and obedience should be expected to flow from bottom up.
The statement of the Honourable Minister cannot be viewed in isolation of the special purpose vehicle (SPV) for the achievement of the marooning of those Nigerian children who seek to further their education in what their country has made available as institutions of higher learning in Africa’s potentially largest economy. This is the season of anomie for those Nigerian children, no doubt. However, it is patently more disastrous to allow them wallow in suffering and uncertainty for no fault of theirs.
JAMB is the whipping baby here but the baby cannot be thrown away with the birth water in a situation of desperation as we currently face. The Board registrar, a professor of Islamic Studies in all honesty cannot say that he didn’t breathe oxygen from the same space with the minister even before he commenced the sale of forms for the 2024 Universal Tertiary Matriculations Examinations (UTME) circle. If he did, felt and knew the Honourable Minister’s pulse about the age for admitting Nigerian children into the available universities, then why did he go on a rampage selling the examinations forms, literally speaking?
It is on record that more than 1.9 million young Nigerian children enrolled and sat for the examinations. Now get the figures correctly: each of those children paid about N7,000.00 to sit for the examinations! By simple multiplication, that amounts to N13,300,000,000 (Thirteen Billion, Three Hundred Million Naira Only!). It is also instructive to note that not up to Eight Hundred Thousand (800,000) candidates scored above 200 marks out of the maximum 400 marks obtainable. There is included in the basket of issues that the Board will chew when the euphoria and dust of these examinations circle settles.
Since Professor Is-haq Oloyede became the registrar of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, give it to him, the Board has become a major revenue harvester into the coffers of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
When the current Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Barrister Nyesom Ezenwo Wike was a Minister of State for Education, the idea of computer-based test (CBT) was gradually gaining ground but that was a reason to make the Board a major source of revenue leakage for the Federal Government until Professor Oloyede got into the fray and before too long, he remitted a humongous revenue surplus to the Federal Government. Since then, there has been no looking back. JAMB is the darling of all Nigerians on how to be prudent with the management of government resources by going into public office to serve and not necessarily for personal aggrandizement. Kudos to the JAMB CEO, but taking money from people you know you are not going to offer admissions as a deliberate government policy, to this writer, is where the devil finds accommodation.
That Nigerians are getting more frustrated by government policies every day is an understatement. Children are coping with the burden of getting education the very hard way, passing examinations the tougher ways and now being told that having passed the ubiquitous Joint Matriculations Examinations, they have been disqualified on account of their age.
As a player in the sector, this writer has first-hand knowledge about how the age issue has become an albatross in the hands of those who want to go the short-cut to success. A child at a commercial bank to pay for a UTME forms some years back couldn’t have been more than 14 years. But the question the parents of such a child would ask on the spur of the moment could be: what common denominator has the age of Methuselah got with the Wisdom of Solomon? And that is the question that the Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman begged in his reasons for insisting that the age for admission of a Nigerian child into a Nigerian university should be 18 years.
As a professor, Tahir Mamman does not need to be reminded of the importance of figures and statistics as tools for selling government policies to the populace. He is supposed to have adduced more convincing reasons for the option that the Federal Government intends to take and how that would lead to a better educational ecosystem that would be the pride of all. He should adopt more deft means to the convincing of Nigerians that the option bodes well for the general well-being of a greater percentage of the populace. He should also justify why JAMB was allowed and permitted to collect so much money from so huge a number of admission seekers when deep down, they know that they will jettison those who are below the age of 18 years.
In the absence of the above, even when the house is so cold, those who are quiet, or silent, should not be ignored. There must be an inevitable backlash and it would be uncomplimentary to the national interest in the long run. The time to do a rethink is now.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
My name is Vincent Chuks Igbinedion, exercising my prerogative of ‘thinking allowed’.
