By MAJOR Bowen argues that the policy is a war against intellectual development
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Education is not a privilege. It is not a luxury. It is a fundamental human right; one that international conventions, to which Nigeria is a signatory, have long declared to be free, compulsory, and non-discriminatory. Yet here in Nigeria, we continue to wage a silent war against our own brightest minds.
In February 2025, the courts of this nation ruled what should have been obvious all along: that the so-called ‘’minimum age” of 16 for university admission is unconstitutional. The judgment struck down the practice as discriminatory, affirming that brilliance has no birthday. But in characteristic arrogance, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has thumbed its nose at the courts, doubling down on the very policy declared null and void.
It is an outright travesty for JAMB to seek a stay of execution on the court’s judgment. How dare JAMB? In a matter that has to do with the right of children to education? This is not just arrogance. JAMB’s action borders on institutional criminality. The JAMB Board behaves like a law unto itself, as though it towers above the Constitution. It should as a matter of urgency be disbanded. No institution, no matter how powerful, is greater than the law. Hiding under legal technicalities to deny Nigerian children their right to quality education is reckless, and unforgivable.
What has followed is an absurd spectacle, a charade dressed up as ‘policy.’ Children branded “underage” are forced to sign oaths like criminals, classified as ‘exceptional’ and then flung into an obstacle course of impossible benchmarks: 280, then 320 out of 400, nearly flawless WAEC aggregates. It is a declaration of war on precocity, a persecution of intelligence itself, as if brilliance were a crime to be contained rather than a gift to be nurtured.
The statistics shame the policy. Nearly 40 percent of JAMB’s own applicants, some 800,000 out of two million are technically ‘underage’ and these are not the laggards. They are often the ones scoring highest, the ones whose results JAMB once tried to suppress, only to release when their excellence could no longer be hidden. Meanwhile, their older peers, supposedly ‘psychologically prepared,’ collapsed at the hurdles: three-quarters of them could not even cross the 200 mark, dragging the national cut-off down to a pitiable 150. If age were the key to academic maturity, the numbers would say so. They do not.
History, too, laughs at JAMB’s logic. The Imafidon family of Edo State hailed in Britain as the “brainiest family” has shown the world what becomes of genius when it is given wings, not chains. Passing advanced mathematics at nine. Entering Oxford at 13. A family of Nigerian descent proving that brilliance does not wait for birthdays. Across the world, societies that reward precocity reap innovation. In Nigeria, we insist on punishing it.
And the punishment is not trivial. By delaying admission, we push our brightest children into late entry into the global job market, where employers often seek graduates in their early twenties. What begins as bureaucratic rigidity becomes a lifelong handicap in employment, research, and innovation. This is not merely bad policy; it is national sabotage.
Nigeria must wake up to this dangerous reality: when the system denies willing students the chance to learn, it does not leave them idle, it drives them straight into ready-made markets of vice. Yahoo fraud for the boys, prostitution for the girls. These are the parallel “industries” thriving in our nation where classrooms fail.
The tragedy is that Nigeria has been here before. From the early decades of independence, when our universities were beacons of African scholarship, to the dark years of policy somersaults and underfunding, the story of Nigerian education has always been one of promise squandered by bureaucracy. Today, we repeat the cycle, shackling the very minds that could redeem us.
Let us be clear: no regulation is sacred. Education, the engine of national progress, cannot remain chained to outdated rigidity. A humane system adapts, it does not crush. The future of Nigeria lies not in how stubbornly we enforce obsolete rules, but in how wisely we cultivate the gifts of our children.
JAMB and the Ministry of Education must end this intellectual apartheid. At the very least, let there be a special admissions window for exceptional candidates who have proved their readiness, whatever their age. Better still, let the policy be buried altogether. Nigeria cannot afford to slam the gates of learning on its brightest children. To persist is to betray the very foundation of education as a right, not a privilege. Free genius from bureaucracy. Let brilliance breathe. The nation’s future depends on it.
Bowen writes from Warri, Delta State
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