For about three hours, motorists and travelers plying Ife—Abuja expressway were forced to park, change routes, detour or entirely abandon their journeys. May 20, students of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile Ife, Osun state in south west Nigeria blocked the ever-busy road in protest against the recent hike in school fees. The public institution was ironically founded by, and named after the man who advocated for free education for all – the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
In the 70s and 80s, schools such as OAU offered free government-funded tertiary education to students, some of whom are now at the helm of affairs of these institutions —and who are now announcing hikes in fees over reasons students describe as unreasonable.
200% Hikes on the Horizon
Days into the last exams, the management of OAU announced new fees for its students which will rise by an average of about 211 percent. Students will be paying from N72,000 ($443) to N80,000 ($492) against the present fee that is as low as N7,000($43).
This hike is occurring in a nation that has a two-digit annual inflation rate.
“I’m annoyed at the outrageous fees,” a female OAU student who wanted to remain anonymous told AFKInsider. She described the hike in fees as the highest form of wickedness.
“Many students applied to the school because of its affordability and with the hike in fees, many of them will be forced to forfeit their admission or abandon their programs,” she said.
According to her, the founder of the school wanted it to be one that offers free education in order to empower all – irrespective of economy class – with education. This vision has been successful to a large extent considering the fact that the institution had trained several notable figures in politics, government, science, medicine, academia, and technology.
A good example is Seun Osewa, founder of Nairaland, Nigeria’s largest online community forum. He reportedly started the platform from the popular Awo Hostel in the university.
But not all government-owned Nigerian schools are cheap as some charge fees that are comparable with those of private-owned universities. One of such is the Lagos State University (LASU) where the students are also at loggerheads with the management and state government — which dragged eight of the students before a High Court in the state for disrupting peace.
But after several appeals and external interventions, the state government agreed on, and approved a 60 percent reduction in the fees.
In a resolution titled “Resolutions of the Lagos State Executive Council on the Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Lagos State University,” Fatai Olukoga, the governor’s special adviser on education, said that the implementation of the reduction was without delay.
“Government agrees that with the subsidized tuition fees and appropriate moderation of the incidental fees, a reduction ranging from 34 per cent to 60 per cent is possible across the different faculties and courses,” he said.
“It has approved the reduction and, in accordance with the law setting up the university, forwarded its approval to the Lagos State University Governing Council for consideration and implementation.”
Following the funds
When members of Nigeria’s Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) last embarked on industrial action, one of the major demands was the improvement in the quality of education and facilities at the nation’s various Ivory Towers. They asked for huge sums of money for each school. They got it.
“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.