It is no longer a news that the minimum age requirement for gaining admission into tertiary institutions of learning in Nigeria at present is sixteen years. The believe of many people is that child(ren) less than the age of sixteen are immature and they have not experience much in life. But they failed to understand that maturity is no determined by age nor the body size of a person but by the quality of brain the person possess.
It is high time we are cleared with the fact that age is just a number. Someone can be of thirty-five years of age and act immaturely while another person of age fifteen can be ethically stable.
Nigeria has failed to progress because of the importance we attached to age, which has seriously contributed to our failure. To be honest, we don't need to go on with this mentality, considering the situations of things in Nigeria.
Many young people in advance countries such as: United Kingdom, United States of America, France etc have young graduates of age thirteen to fifteen, and they are doing wonderfully well. Are children from these parts of the world having two heads? Or are they not created by God, who created Nigerian children too? This is a question of time, which we need to ask ourselves and continue to contemplate.
WHY AGE RESTRICTION BARRIER SHOULD BE REMOVED DURING ADMISSION INTO NIGERIAN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS
1. WE ARE IN THE JET AGE: It is no longer a mystery to have kids of high intellectual quotient(IQ; their IQ are far beyond their age. So there's no need to debate that jet age innovations have a fast forward effect on the educational system through out all the countries of the whole world, of which Nigeria is not an exception.
2. FAST WAY CHILDREN LEARN: We need to understand that the children of nowadays learn faster than students of old days their brains have a storage capacity of terabytes and not megabytes like the people born four decades ago. Well, I'm not surprised and I don't think anyone need to be surprised because these children grew up using sophisticated gadgets in their various families. The level these children can reach when operating a mobile phone and other modern gadgets, older people can't reach this level. Imagine the kind of phones most of young people use now, most of them are using iPhone, when their parents in reality used one yellow backlight phone with a long antenna during the time they were in their age bracket. The task older people will do under hours will be completed by the children of nowadays within minutes. So why should these children now be restricted to be admitted into tertiary institution at an early stage with this amazing way of grabbing whatever they learn very fast?.
3. TO ENCOURAGE THEM AND BOOST THEIR MORALE: It is absurd to see children who finished their secondary education as early as age thirteen and fourteen being delayed for additional two to three years before having an opportunity to further their university education. Some of them end up losing interest in education and getting involved in irrelevant things. Their long stay at home may even discourage them or kill their morale, and if they eventually further their education, it can never be like the way it would have been if they had gained admission immediately they finished secondary school.
4. MAXIMUM AGE LIMIT FOR WORKING: In Nigeria, the maximum age limit that a graduate can work is twenty-six years. Once a graduate is above the age of twenty-six, it will be difficult for him or her to have a gainful employment. Most graduates in Nigeria now are above this specified age because it took longer time before they gained admission into higher institution of learning. Some of them wrote jamb up to six times before they eventually gained admission. The worst aspect is that despite the delay by jamb, they will still get to school and be delayed by ASUU strike. In the event of no job, most of these graduates end up doing menial jobs and not able to get a befitting job that will match their degree certificate. Those that can't do menial jobs will end up doing illegal works which end up increasing the crime rate in Nigeria.
So in my opinion, the minimum age requirement for gaining admission into tertiary institution is really causing a big problem in Nigeria rather than doing good to the country. The authority in charge need to do something about this before the situation get out of hand.
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