CERON Slams FG For Setting 18yrs As Benchmark For WASSCE, UTME Registration, Says Policy Strange, Unthinkable

The Campaign for Equal Rights and Opportunities for all Nigerians, CERON, has slammed Federal Government for limiting Nigerian children below 18 years from registering for WAEC, NECO and JAMB examinations saying the policy belongs to the archives.

It will be recalled that that the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman had recently on national television allegedly said the Federal Government had directed WAEC, which conducts the West African Senior School Certificate Examination and NECO, which oversees the Senior School Certificate Examination to enforce the 18-year age requirement for candidates wishing to write the exams from next year.

The Executive Secretary of CERON, Mr. Francis Odiir in a statement weekend in Makurdi described the policy as “strange and unthinkable because it will retard the growth of education in the country.”

Odiir pointed out that the “policy is not in tune with what is obtainable across the globe where governments take delibrate steps to encourage students to finish up from secondary school early enough and proceed to tertiary institutions.

“Our question is what does the Minister of Education intend to achieve by wanting to introduce this policy? Even if the policy had been there and not implemented, why does he want to implement it in this time and age.

“We urge President Bola Tinubu to scrap the policy if truly it exists, because it is meant to retard the education of our children most of whom finished secondary school before 18 years. Most of our children now round up with Secondary School at 16 years. So is he saying that they must wait to attain 18 years before they write those exams.

“The Educatuon Minister must be made to realise that we are living in an age of exceptionally brilliant children who even at very young age are breaking new grounds and cannot be retarded by the archaic policy.

“We urge the Minister to shelve plans to introduce that policy because the present generation of young Nigerians cannot be held back from doing exploits in education through a policy that belongs to the archives.”