With the advent of fuel subsidy removal and the stoppage of federal funding of universities, federal universities in the country resorted to increasing their school fees in order to meet operational costs. Some universities doubled their fees, while institutions like the University of Lagos increase fees by more than 600 percent. According to the university management, the increase was inevitable for the school to run its programs without having a deficit, seeing that the school had exhausted all other options.
Against the backdrop of Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis, students at the University of Lagos staged many demonstrations to demand the withdrawal of a major increase in compulsory fees for new students and students already enrolled on undergraduate courses. This was during the holidays. Initially, fees for undergraduate lab students were N160,000 and N100,000 for non-lab students. After the demonstration, which involved the police, the university went back to the drawing board and eventually slashed the fees by N20,000 each.
Cost increase expected but not as much as school actually increased fees.
One of the students of the institution who found it difficult to pay the increased fees spoke to the media. According to him, even when it was still N15,000, some students still could not afford it. These students were from families feeding from hand to mouth. “They had to go round to gather a token of N15,000,” he said. Before the fee increase, Unilag’s fees were N15,000 for non-lab students and N20,000 for lab students.
But now that the cost has more than tripled, these student will find it extremely difficult to pay their fees. Another student (of the Faculty of Law) told news correspondents that she expected the cost to increase but not as much as the school decided to increase it. She said that she understood the fact that the economy has taken a hit and costs are rising, but the fees are more than tripled for students like her.
A number of initiatives have been established to help the indigent.
Meanwhile, the school has said that the fees are not even enough to run the entire university system. However, the school has come up with some initiatives to cushion the effect for indigent students. One of them is the Work-Study Programme, where eligible students work for about ten hours a week for ten weeks and could earn between N500 and N1000 per hour. At the end of the semester, the student could earn between N50,000 and N100,000.
Another of such is the indigent sponsorship program. In this program, indigent students are interviewed and supported if their case is seen as genuine. The program was instituted by the school and being overseen by the counselling unit of the university. Several other units of the university such as the alumni association also support the initiative. Indeed, the university has been trying its best to help students who could not afford the fees as well as those who could not pay all at once. This is why the instalmental payment option has been activated on the student portal for everyone.
FG to increase education allocation to 25% in budget.
Most importantly, the Federal Government has said that it is ready to increase budgetary allocation to the education sector to 25 percent. This is in order to meet global standards, improve quality of learning, and retain the best hands in the system. This was disclosed by the minister of education during a media briefing to reel out the ministry’s preparations for the 2023 World Teachers Day. Although President Tinubu had promised during his campaign to revive the sector, the happenings in the sector has now left everyone in doubt.
Related Link
University of Lagos: Website
