Pegging Varsity Admission to 18 Years Policy Designed Against South, Middle Belt, Says Oodua Group

The policy of the Federal Ministry of Education led by Tahir Mamman to peg university and polytechnic admissions to 18 years is driven by ethnic interests, a pan-Yoruba group has said.

In a statement on Thursday, the Alliance for Yoruba Democratic Movements (AYDM) said the idea of having higher education admission pegged at 18 would affect no fewer than 20 million Nigerian students with 99 percent of them from the South and the Middle Belt.

The group called on southern and Middle Belt states to resist what the group described as an obnoxious policy.

AYDM, a coalition of 130 pan-Yoruba and Itsekiri groups said the attempt of the policy was based on the strategic thinking of filling the current education gap skewed against the core North.

The AYDM said Nigeria was gradually moving towards greater and dangerous unitarianism where fundamental decisions that affected the livelihood of Nigerians would be taken by a few individuals.

The group lamented that instead of the National Assembly presiding over fundamental issues on education, the minister had autocratically assigned the role of Alpha and Omega to himself.

The group asked the minister to explain to Nigerians which research study or conference he organised where such a fundamental decision was arrived at.

“The AYDM and the Yoruba Nation rejects this terrible assault on the knowledge industry. In Europe and in the US, the hub of Western education, there are university graduates that came out of school at 10 years”, the group stated, adding “the policy destroys creativity, talents and endowment given by God. It is obnoxious and savage to think that a 16 year old person cannot learn when such a child had performed wonderfully throughout his or her educational career in the secondary schools.”

The AYDM argued that children who were 16 could be allowed to beg on the streets, were banned from university or polytecnic education.

“Children who are 16 can join Boko Haram and terrorists, but they are banned from university education. Students who are 16 can go into armed robbery, but they are banned from university education. 16 year olds can marry and have children, but they are banned from university education” the AYDM wondered.

The group called on groups across the Middle Belt and the South to unite in the effort to thwart and destroy the primordial agenda of the minister of Education.

The AYDM said in decent democracies, under-aged children with talents were encouraged to actualize their potential, and not to destroy and take away from them the gifts of God.