The Minister of Education Professor Tahir Mamman, last week in a popular Channels Television programme Sunday Politics had his mind closed against all arguments for those he called ‘under aged’ candidates to sit for senior secondary school certificate (SSCE) examinations next year.
He said that the Federal Government had instructed the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO), which organise the senior secondary certificate examination to comply with the directive on 18 years age limit for any candidate to be eligible for the two examinations. It means that such under aged students may not qualify to sit for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) for 2025.
Professor Mamman, an erudite scholar and a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), admitted that it was not a matter of age but a matter of years a student would have been through from early childcare, primary and secondary which would amount to seventeen and half years. To him, 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.
From the interview, the limit is 18 years; it is not clear whether those above 18 years are also ‘over aged’. In the same breath, the Minister avoided the case of smart children which he said is a conversation for another day. The data of students including smart students that may be affected by the directive not available to the Education Minister.
The numbers may be staggering and pretty grave if the Minister cares to find out. It is not just SS3 students that would be affected. As it cascades, each activates and affects other classes in primary, junior secondary and senior secondary. These students are in the Generation Z (Gen Z) born 1997-2012, and more recently Generation Alpha (Gen Alpha) born 2013-2025. Majority of them are smart children whose educational pursuits the Education Minister may be suspending. That may amount to a government induced out-of-school children. Is it possible for them to be volunteers in waiting for misguided elements in society to recruit them to fuel insecurity including terrorism which the government has been grappling with since 2009. Its variants, kidnapping and banditry, and recently cyberterrorism are there. Would smart children still be a conversation for another day as the Minister may be tempted to say? NO! The interest should not be just preventing them from registering and writing qualifying examinations for tertiary institutions, but the wider socioeconomic implications to the nation..
Ones appeal to the Minister is to look at this matter dispassionately as an experienced professor and suspend it. The Minister should view the whole system, analyse it rather than simply its individual components. One would rather go with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s approach who, on April 18, 2024, approved the DOTS initiative. The DOTS is an acronym for Data repository, Out-of-school children education, Teacher training and development, and lastly Skill development and acquisition. The President admitted that data was critical for planning, approved the conduct of an extensive census of all schools in Nigeria, from primary to tertiary level, their conditions, and live-in facilities, proximity to one another, educational infrastructure, etc. The DOTS which the Minister also alluded to, will take a census of all pupils, in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions, gender, examination grades etc.
The information gathered will guide federal and state interventions for teachers training as well as overall support. It will also provide data on gender ratio, their specific learning needs, and who is in school or who has dropped out based on daily monitoring with year-by year reporting. The President also approved a portal/dashboard in the Federal Ministry of Education, offices of State Governors, and local government chairmen, which will host and disseminate these information for the Federal Government, states, and local governments to monitor real time. The new data tracking architecture will enable government to track the progress of students, thus having a clear data-driven mechanism for interventions, especially concerning out-of-school children, girls and those with specific learning disabilities. Under the programme, the Federal Ministry of Education will support and train teachers in digital skills, to facilitate the use of technology in classrooms.
The initiative will create a data repository that will address the paucity of coordinated, verifiable, and authentic data on all aspects of the education sector in Nigeria. It is indeed a plan or strategy designed to deal with problems in the education sector. From the beautiful initiative, it will ensure an overhaul of the sector for improved learning and skill development and ensure academic security of children. It gave a ray of hope in tackling the problems in our socioeconomic firmament if well implemented. These are all efforts at solving a protracted problem that requires a logical progression. And one does not believe that the President’s approval of DOTS meant when he speaks, you jump.
Education is the bedrock of any society’s development. We are looking at maturity and education. No doubt age is important. But the age of Methuselah has nothing to do with the wisdom of Solomon. What have we made education to become in Nigeria? We generally graduate in character and learning, but how many of us have really developed in mind, conscience and character? Would the Education Minister in good conscience affirm that those that were of age to sit for qualifying examinations since Independence have helped the development of Nigeria over the decades? If age is the problem, then we need to re-examine the concept of age and maturity. May one remind the Minister that many that had good and quality education and at the ripe age of admission as the Minister portrayed may have caused the leadership rot and management diseases in our system today. Judging from massive looting of public treasury by some corrupt administrators and politicians who dip their hands in the till, loot and send their children abroad for studies, we should not pontificate about age to the ordinary Nigerian.
The rot in the education system and indeed the polity is so much that we do not want to solve a problem and create a greater problem. How did we get here are the issues to interrogate. In solving the problem, we must look at the root causes and not the symptoms as the Minister is trying to do. Examine the issue of job and procurement racketeering in the public service. Many applicants and contract seeking Nigerians part with money, or lose ‘virginity’ (for our beautiful ladies), from the high and mighty in government that were mature when they wrote qualifying examinations. Ditto admissions into universities, etc. Apologies to good Nigerians. Universities lecturers have been battling the Federal Government over 2009 agreement and where are we? Nowhere! With the threat of ASUU going on strike in the next few weeks, some Universities are hurriedly conducting examinations even when they may not have concluded their semester courses. Parents and students have suffered enough that they should not be bogged down with age matter.
How can we challenge those in the academia to be more relevant to our industries and indeed solutions to the malaises of the nation. These rest on the shoulders of whoever is the Minister of Education, and for now Professor Tahir Mamman. The adage goes that one does not carry an elephant on his head and be pursuing a cricket to kill it. Government is to solve problem and not to compound it. From ones understanding, the DOTS initiative of President Tinubu, is a declaration of state of emergency in the education sector. The National Council on Education including State government buy in is imperative for it to work. There would be procurement in this regard and it takes time. For this project to be successful the Minister should be methodical by engaging a think tank comprising the academia, educationists, sociologists, psychologists, statisticians, mathematicians, economists, IT professionals, lawyers, religious and allied institutions, etc. If we are not to increase the rate of out of school children, the Minister should tarry a while to clear the issues. One does not think the Minister would categorically say how many students would be affected since there are no data. From the President’s frank admission of lack of data in the education sector, it would amount to the Minister jumping the gun.
Sonny Atumah, a Journalist, Researcher and Management Consultant, writes from Abuja