Despite the seeming lull in the agitation by students of public tertiary institutions in Nigeria over the hike in tuition fees, after the removal of fuel subsidy and unification of the foreign exchange rates, it’s still necessary to interrogate the matter.
After viewing the film footage of the wailing University of Lagos female student who expressed fear that she might drop out of school, not because of poor academic performance but because she could not pay the new tuition fee, you would pity her.
If the unity colleges spread across the nation raise their own school fees, the out-of-school-children syndrome, hitherto peculiar to the elementary school level, may extend to the secondary and tertiary school levels.
In justifying the increase in the tuition fees of the University of Lagos, the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Folasade Ogunsola, argued that despite the steady rise of the cost of maintenance, the tuition fees of the university remained the same for 20 years.
She added that even with the use of low-energy bulbs and solar-powered street lights, the annual electricity bill of the university, which receives only N150m annually for all its running costs, is as high as N1.7bn!
While returning undergraduate students studying courses that require laboratory and studio facilities will henceforth pay N140,250, and medical students will pay N190,250, others will pay N100,750.
New students whose courses require laboratory and studio facilities will pay N175,325 per session, and those whose courses do not need those facilities will pay N126,325. Also, new students in the College of Health Sciences and the Faculty of Pharmacy will pay N190,200, while returning students will pay N128,200.
But compassion prevailed and the management of the University of Lagos met with the National Association of Nigerian Students and swiftly reviewed the new school fees downward by N20,000 across the board. The University of Jos travelled the same road.
New students of Arts, Law and Humanities faculties of the Obafemi Awolowo University will pay N151,200. Returning students will pay N89,200. While new students of faculties of Technology and Science will pay N163,200, returning students will pay N101,200.”
Ambrose Alli University has however become the most expensive public university in Nigeria. Its law students, who used to pay N185,000 tuition fees, will now pay N741,500. Medical students, who used to pay N216,000, will now pay N638,000.
You may not blame students who protest the hike in their tuition fees. They have every right to complain because of the difficulties that most of them who are indigent will have in raising the funds to meet the new school fees regime.
However, the students may just be misdirecting their angst against the hike in tuition fees at the management of their tertiary institutions, instead of the Federal Government that is unable to meet up with its responsibilities.
Practically, all Nigerian governments have woefully failed to run the economy of the nation so that successful citizens and corporate organisations will be in a position to pay taxes, from which the tertiary institutions, some of which were forcibly acquired from state governments, will be adequately funded.
Anyone who disagrees with the idea that some universities should be financed by the government has neither heard the former military President, Ibrahim Babangida, say, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance,” nor America’s United Negro College Fund advert pitch, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
That is not to say that there will be no room for private universities. Those who think their wards should attend expensive private universities, so that the wards can network with wards of the rich and influential, are welcome to it– if they can afford it.
The state should provide legroom for indigent students whose parents or guardians cannot afford expensive private universities. State governments should provide bursaries for their citizens, as the Lagos State Government did recently.
Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, thinks that Nigeria has enough resources to finance free education at all levels. In 1975, the Minister of Economic Planning of the Gen. Yakubu Gowon military government, Prof. Adebayo Adedeji, made a startling revelation.
He disclosed that the Federal Government spent N3000 on each student in the university, whereas the student spent only N300. You then wonder why the government did not simply pick up the entire bill, and make education free.
Even in the United States, with its “naked” capitalism, the government provides for the university education of the poor through scholarships, grants and loans. Thus, the indigent, like Ronald Reagan, who attended a lesser-known university, achieved the same height of US President as John F. Kennedy who was born into a rich family and attended Harvard University.
Have you noticed that no one is protesting the high tuition fees paid in private universities, some of which are not anywhere better than the public universities? Their students are willing buyers.
Instead of granting its universities full administrative, operational and financial autonomy, the Federal Government holds on to them and prevents them from being able to raise funds through other means.
If public universities will have to hike their tuition fees, it is necessary to look for the cause of the general problem, which, no doubt, is the government that insists on taking on a problem it cannot handle.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities and other unions in the Nigerian university system have shouted themselves hoarse; asking the sundry governments of Nigeria to give autonomy to the universities.
ASUU went on strike for about eight months in 2022, and former President Muhammadu Buhari hardly paid the union any attention. He even refused to pay their outstanding salaries accrued to lecturers during a strike that was caused by the government’s inability to meet up with agreement it willingly entered into.
You can imagine the relief of these unions when the then-presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (now President Bola Tinubu) promised to grant full autonomy to Nigerian universities.
The former Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos, late Prof. Oyewusi Ibidapo-Obe, described academic freedom as “the legal freedom afforded to each university to conduct its own affairs and policies without undue interference from outside bodies, persons, or, most importantly, from the government that chooses to support it in most parts of Africa.”
You’ll have observed that this definition is silent on the idea of “financial autonomy,” which should allow the establishment of endowment funds, soliciting funds from philanthropists and corporate donors and charging appropriate tuition fees.
Maybe students of the University of Lagos, who took to the streets to protest the hike in school fees, should call on Tinubu to make good his promise. He should note that his first policy shot, the awkwardly defined student loan, with its unrealistic modus operandi, won’t adequately address the issue.
Those who are running the “staid” Ministry of Education need to demonstrate some sure-footedness. This is no time to be missing in action. The government should get its Student Loan Act together.
The Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, has however reiterated that Tinubu “is determined, among other (things), to initiate a new creative means of funding tertiary education by granting universities the autonomy to explore new sources of funding their activities.”
Yes, the government is the cause of the hike in tuition fees, but NANS must urgently engage this seemingly willing Federal Government.
