“Since the schools got the money from the federal government, why are they still asking the students to pay more fees again?” Dapo Akinolu, a Lagos-based educationist asked.

In addition, agencies, and organizations including petroleum companies, commercial banks, and international bodies regularly announce endowments and supports for Nigerian universities. The World Bank recently announced several hundreds of millions of dollars for selected Nigerian universities as support funds for various projects in the respective institutions. OAU was among the beneficiaries.

Apart from these, the Nigerian government through the education ministry has allocations for each school and is rightly stated in the country’s annual budget. So, instead of asking the students to pay more, the schools could have asked for more funds from the government.

If they are denied more funds, the student body ought to have been informed of the impending hike so that they could persuade the Nigerian government to make more funds available to their respective schools.

Internally generated revenues and public-private partnerships are other ways through which the various schools could raise more funds for the proposed renovation and improvement projects. Companies such as Google, Microsoft and Samsung are providing such support – even the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Researchers at the various institutions could also attract funding and endowments that would make expensive facilities and equipments available at their respective departments.

These and several more options are available for the universities to explore in order to make university education very cheap in Nigeria for students from all economy classes.

Sacrificing quality

Cross section of students in the schools said if the authorities were considering hiking the fees as a way of getting more funds to improve the quality of education, they’d rather prefer the status quo remains – in other words, they would rather manage the present quality and pay more fees.

“Of what use is quality education that not everyone can afford?” Akinolu asked.

There is also the issue of distrust as a large number of the students said they don’t believe the school authorities really have intentions of improving the quality of facilities at the schools since previous hikes had little or no impacts on the quality of education.

Foreign comparison

Students and school authorities in Nigeria often refer to foreign institutions when trying to make a point. Students often say foreign schools are better equipped and don’t abruptly hike fees while management often says foreign schools charge millions of naira per student which is why they could afford to be self-sufficient and churn out top quality graduates with relative ease.

“For the schools to be able to stand on their own and provide necessary facilities for the students, tuition fees would run into several millions of naira. If you look at the fees being paid at Harvard and other reputable schools, you would see that when you convert the fees to naira, the tuition fee would be in millions. Although we desire the same quality in Nigeria, our people cannot afford it just yet,” Seyi Ogungbemi, a bank executive said.

It is however worthy to note that the major goal of government-owned institutions in Nigeria is to make quality education affordable and available to Nigerians. In other words, government-owned universities in Nigeria are not profit-oriented and no matter how hard the managements try, the schools cannot be self-sufficient.