•Senate
The Senate has assured Nigerians that the 16-year age requirement for applicants seeking admissions to tertiary institutions in the country has not been changed.
The Red Chamber said that the comments about increasing the age limit to 18 years were personal opinions, reports The Nation.
The upper chamber clarified that any downward or upward review of the age limit could only be done by legislation that followed due process.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Yemi Adaramodu, made these assertions while responding to questions from reporters in Abuja at the weekend.
The Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, had last week expressed strong reservations with the policy allowing 16-year old candidates to gain admission into universities in the country.
He said the federal government may up the minimum entry age into tertiary institutions in the country to 18 years.
Professor Mamman gave this indication while monitoring the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in Abuja.
He had warned parents against pushing their children and wards “too much,” and advised them to allow them reach some level of maturity to be able to better manage their affairs.
“The other thing which we notice is the age of those who have applied to go to the university.
“Some of them are really too young. We are going to look at it because they are too young to understand what a university education is all about.
“That’s the stage when students migrate from a controlled environment to where they are in charge of their own affairs. So if they are too young, they won’t be able to manage properly. That accounts for some of the problems we are seeing in the universities.
“We are going to look at that. Eighteen is the entry age for university but you will see students, 15, and 16, going to the examination. It is not good for us. Parents should be encouraged not to push their wards or children too much,” Mamman had said.
Members of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) had also declared their support for the move by the federal government to peg the minimum entry age into tertiary institutions in the country at 18 years.
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, Senator Muntari Dandutse, gave this hint when he led other members of the panel as well as its House of Representatives counterpart on monitoring the UTME in some examination centres as the lawmakers’ oversight function.
Dandutse said the Senate would support every effort by the government to streamline admission processes, especially the area of minimum age requirements for entry into tertiary institutions in the country.
However, the Senate through its spokesperson declared that nothing would be done on the minimum age requirement into tertiary institutions until all the stakeholders in the education sector endorse it.
Responding to a question, Adaramodu said the “comment on the minimum age requirement for admission is not a law. So it is just an opinion. It’s not a law. By the time the Senate resumes, whoever wants to bring that one out to make it a law, will now bring it and then the procedures will take place.
“You can bring whatever to the floor in form of a bill. When you bring it, there’s going to be a public hearing.
“All the stakeholders will sit down and talk about it. The parents, teachers, legislators, civil society organisations, even foreign organisations.
“We will sit down and talk. Even if they say that the minimum age should be 30 or 12 we will all discuss it at an open forum. So, it’s still a comment which cannot be taken to be the law.”
He dismissed insinuations that the Minister of Education had instructed the leadership of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) not to release results of applicants below 18 years.
He said: “There is nothing like that. When the prospective students bought their forms, there were no such conditions.
“So when you have bought your forms under one condition, that condition cannot be vitiated along the line until the current set of candidates have been successfully attended to.
“When the next engagement is to take place, then if it is brought even as an Executive Bill or personal or private bill or the public brings it as a bill, then the National Assembly will now sit down and allow it to go through the crucible of lawmaking.
“This is a country, this is Nigeria. So all of us will sit down and deliberate.
“So far, it is just a mere comment, it’s just an opinion. It is not law yet.”
