I feel compelled to join the discussion on this new university/school age qualifications and requirements policy of the Nigerian government. I was very busy but enjoying snippets of the ideas shared here.
Sometimes, when brilliant, Mr. Kperogi intervenes because of the depth of the research supporting his point of view. We are tempted to conclude that should be the final word. However, on this issue, that should not be the case.
There are many policy differences that I have with most conservative writers. But one thing I agree with them is that parents are the best persons to make critical decisions on their children, not the school and definitely not the government. The government has a tendency, as in this case, to mandate a policy without thinking through the unintended consequences. In our Nigerian system, many homes are blessed with many children.
Each child have their inate abilities and strength. There are some that are really self starters and brilliant in their academic progressions. They are well ahead of their peers in academic performance and more than ready to move several steps ahead. If you mandate an 18-year requirement for university admission, you by fiat stop that progression. This is inherently unfair and place many such children in limbo and their parents in a quandary.
I would use just some examples to buttress this point. My father was a school teacher and really great in determining the strength of school-age children from all their personal attributes. My older brothers were brilliant and went to boarding schools. Then, proceeded to A-levels before university admission. So they were in their 20s in the university. I was a day student riding from home to school in the school where my father was Vice Principal. But I made some my school certificate requirements in form 4 through GCE exams. That told my dad I was ready for higher education. When in my final year, I made all my papers and passed JAMB and was offered admission at Ife, I confirmed his calculations and projections for me.
When I got to Ife, I was 17, myself, Niyi Esan and Bola Lana were the youngest students in our class. We all did well at the department. A policy such as this would have truncated 3 innocent students’ careers whose only fault was because they were good students.
Now, the other examples were second generation. My friends’ children, one a classmate at Ife, the other a classmate from grammar school. My Ife classmate’s son at 14 was the best mathematics student in Nigeria. He wrote college requirements exams for colleges in the U.S. from Nigeria and excelled. He was offered admissions in 10 schools in the U.S. at 15 with full scholarships. Today, he is a final year Bachelors in mathematics student at Duke University with a GPA of 4.5.
The same feat was achieved earlier by my Grammar School classmate’s son at the University of Texas at Austin. He got admitted with full scholarship at 14 and today, he is a PhD. student in robotics at 21. So, mandating this policy would work against the progress of exceptional students
