Students reject more than 1,000% fee increment by Nigerian university

The Students’ Union (SU) of the University of Ibadan (UI), Oyo State, has rejected the recent fee hike announced by the institution’s management and demanded a reverse.

The union has also written to the university management to request the suspension of payments and registration of fresh students and a meeting with the authorities “to clarify further the true situation of things, including the fees for returning students, and seek a possible peaceful resolution.”

The Students’ Union President, Samuel Tobiloba, and Secretary, Olaniyi Dolapo, disclosed this in a statement shared with PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday.

The university recently increased the fees payable by fresh students by more than 1,000 per cent, according to a campus-based publication.

Before the latest increments, the fees payable by fresh students ranged from N20,000 to N30,000, according to the student union. But the latest increments for fresh students range from N203,000 to N412,000.

Efforts to get the reaction of the university authorities on the matter were unsuccessful, as messages sent to the institution’s Public Relations Officer, Joke Akinpelu, were unanswered as of the time of filing this report.

The students union has, however, rejected the move, saying it is “willing to explore all the available options to press home our demand.”

“The Student Representative Council (SC) equally held an emergency sitting, and the resolution of the sitting is as earlier circulated by the council’s leadership,” it said.

“Our union’s position on increment in fees, especially at this hard time, remains the same (NO TO FEE INCREMENT).”

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Fee hike pattern

Since last year, more than two dozen Nigerian public and private universities have hiked student fees in what has become an established trend among the universities despite increasing hardship in the country.

Some public universities that have increased school fees include the University of Maiduguri, the University of Benin, Ahmadu Bello University, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, the University of Lagos and the University of Abuja.

The university administrators said the fee hike became necessary due to the increasing cost of maintaining the schools and keeping staff motivated.

The Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Folasade Ogunsola, a professor, said last year that the old fees regime was no longer sustainable, noting that the university has continued to incur increasing expenses, leading to revenue deficits of about N1 billion annually.

Mrs Ogunsola’s counterpart at the University of Abuja, Abdulrasheed Na’Allah, had also said the fee increment resulted from inflation, the high cost of maintaining the institution’s facilities and delivering world-class education.

The Baze University, an Abuja-based private institution that recently hiked tuition and sundry charges, also said it was necessitated by several factors, including the astronomical rise in the cost of goods and services and general economic downturns.

Qosim Suleiman is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe