By Sunday Ani
The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 general elections, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has described as senseless the recent ban placed on students who are below the age of 18 from writing the senior school certificate exams conducted by both the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO), as well as from gaining admission into the universities in Nigeria.
The Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, had recently announced the ban on admission for candidates under the age of 18 into tertiary institutions, as well as from writing WAEC and NECO exams in the country. The announcement has continued to generate mixed reactions from Nigerians.
While some have commended the government’s effort to ensure that underage students are not admitted into universities, others have expressed concerns about the potential consequences of the policy.
Prince Adebayo condemned the policy announcement, saying it didn’t go through a thorough process. He said: “How can you come out and say that a kid who is brilliant cannot go to the university because he is not 18 years old? When I got admission to study law at the University of Ife, I was 17 years old. So many of these new policies that they are bringing out now don’t make sense and these are the things that make people think that this government is not thinking through many of its processes and the life experiences that people have. It is not a political slur to say you don’t have credibility; what it means is that people are not following you. You are on your own even though you are supposed to lead all of us into prosperity.”
Adebayo also spoke on the ostentatious lifestyles of government’s officials, including President Tinubu, who he accused of asking Nigerians to tighten their belts but refused to lead by example.
“Instead, they are living large and making the people angry. People are annoyed that you are living a very large life. If you are tightening the belt around the waist, that could be a waist trainer, and they can tell you how to consume less. But, you cannot tighten the belt around the neck of the people, in which case they will not be able to breathe. The things that are going up for the poor are the things that are not discretionary.
“There are a lot of crises that are facing this country that we monitor on a daily basis and the government doesn’t even seem to be aware of them and that is what is worrisome. They need to wake up.”
Adebayo said he was one of those who doesn’t want the government to fail, but the officials’ actions so far point to the direction of not only failing but also unseating itself.
“I don’t want them to fail, and my intention is not to unseat them because they are already unseating themselves by their own efforts. My feeling is that they don’t intend to come back because the way they are behaving is the feeling of somebody who knows that he is not going to come back. They are behaving like one chance.”