Mr Ike Onyechere, the Chairman, Exam Ethics Marshal International, has advised parents and guardians to ensure their wards attained a certain level of maturity before allowing them to enrol in tertiary institutions.
Onyechere gave the advice when he featured on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Forum in Abuja on Sunday.
He said that an immature child would lack the capacity to handle pressures he/she might likely be exposed to in the higher institution.
“ The issue of age has to do with maturity. That was what led me to develop what we call the Campus Orientation Programme.
“ Because what happens is that some of them will finish secondary school at an early age of 13, 14 and you bundle them and put them in the university.
“And one of the things that happens in the universities or tertiary institutions is that first of all, there is this sense of freedom that your father is not there, your mother is not there; is this how the world is? so sweet.
“And that age is the age of experimentation; it is the age when the child wants to experiment with things, with ideas, with notions, with groups.
“Some of the children at that age, they start to experiment with these cult groups and by the time the parents or even the school realise it, they have gone too far; you have lost them.
“ I think that the message, the orientation, the campaign has to be done that it is in the interest of the child and the interest of the parent for children to reach a certain level of maturity.
“Today again, the problem is that when you put your children in the control of lecturers and teachers, you expect them to take good care of them but they exploit them.
“They subject them to sexual harassment or extort money; so the child is on his own and by the time he comes out, he is traumatised.’’
He noted that some youths who had passed through the Nigerian educationcal institutions had become “radically corrupt’’ and it has ultimately affected the society.
Commenting on the craze for certificate acquisition at all cost, Onyechere decried the trend, saying that not everybody is destined to be a university graduate in order to be successful.
He said that more emphasis should be placed on people discovering their skills and talents and harnessing it for their good and the development of the society.
“I keep telling people that certificate is not everything; certificate is one way.
“One of the things that have happened is that we have missed on what the purpose of education is; the purpose of your education is number one, for you to discover yourself; who are you?
“Number two, for you to discover your talents because God creates every person for a purpose; God had given you a destiny.
“So, your process of education is to identify that mission and to identify the talents with which you will fulfill that mission.
“If you are able to identify these two things, you will achieve your destiny and you will be very successful.
“Now in going through that process, you may even find that it is not part of y our path to go through the university.
He stressed the need for a thorough evaluation of the assessment process, to ensure that at least 80 per cent of graduates merit the certificate they had received. (NAN)