Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has faulted the Federal Government over the 18-year age limit for pupils writing West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and National Examination Council (NECO) examinations, calling it a barrier to scholarship.
This came as a university lecturer, Dr. Stella Aririguzuh, emphasised that banning under-18 students from sitting for the WASSCE will lead to capital flight.
The Federal Government, through the minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, had announced a ban on individuals below 18 years from participating in the NECO and WAEC exams.
Mamman, while appearing on Channels Television’s ‘Sunday Politics’ programme, said the Federal Government has instructed WAEC and NECO to enforce the age requirement for candidates taking these exams.
However, the former Vice President, who reacted to the development via his verified Facebook page yesterday, labelled the policy as controversial and called for universal condemnation from those who value intellectual freedom and accessibility.
He stated: “The recent policy of the Federal Ministry of Education pegging age limits for entry to tertiary institutions is an absurdity and a disincentive to scholarship.
Read Also: President: Atiku should wait till 2032, says Bode George
“The policy runs foul of the notion of delineation of responsibilities in a Federal System of government such as we are practising, and gives a graphic impression of how the Tinubu government behaves like a lost sailor on a high sea.
“Otherwise, 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.”
The former Vice President highlighted that the most effective global approach is to allow sub-national governments to establish their education laws or regulations.
To Dr. Aririguzuh, who is the Head, Department of Mass Communication, Covenant University at Ota in Ogun, said the proposed policy by the Federal Government would force Nigerians to send their children to overseas countries for further studies.
“More parents will send their children to schools outside Nigeria, further depleting our resources,” Aririguzuh said.
She explained that the policy would kill the zeal of students to push themselves to achieve more in their younger days.
Aririguzuhnoted that the advantage of the policy was that the country would have matured students coming into the universities.