UTME 2024: 16 years age for varsity admission hasn’t changed – Senate

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Adeyemi Adaramodu, stated the Senate’s position in an interview in Abuja.

According to him, comments attributed to a Senator to the effect that 18 years is the new minimum age is the Senator’s personal opinion to which he is entitled to.
Adaramodu explained that any change to an existing law must pass through the legislative process in order to be valid.
Recall, the Minister of Education, Prof.
Tahir Mamman, last week unveiled a proposal by the federal government to review the admission requirement age from 16 years to 18 years.

He spoke during a monitoring visit to centres conducting the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in Abuja.
He advised parents against pushing their children and wards “too much,” to allow them to attain some level of maturity to be able to better manage their affairs.

Mamman said, “The other thing which we notice is the age of those who have applied to go to the university.

“Some of them are really too young. We are going to look at it because they are too young to understand what a university education is all about.

“That’s the stage when students migrate from a controlled environment where they are in charge of their own affairs. So if they are too young, they won’t be able to manage properly. That accounts for some of the problems we are seeing in the universities.