AFFLICTED by incessant strikes and shabby infrastructure, students at Nigeria’s public universities are contending with a new reality: unusual and astronomical fee hikes by the institutions. Among others, the Tai Solarin University of Education, the University of Lagos, and Obafemi Awolowo University, have raised their fees. This has generated protests. The schools counter that they have no other choice amid dwindling funding and rising costs. In a country where the minimum wage is N30,000 per month, many indigent undergraduates might soon drop out of school. That will be catastrophic.
TASUED raised its fees by between over 200 per cent and 300 per cent. In July, UNILAG increased its tuition to N190,500 from N19,000. The school blamed this on the high costs of “hostel maintenance, electricity (N1.7 billion per year) and internet services, annual result verification and certification, programme accreditation….”
The University of Jos, and Bayero University, Kano, also increased fees. The University of Ibadan had proposed N213,500 and N318,000 from N121,000 and N173,850 for the 2022/2023 academic session.
These fees, which do not include feeding, books, projects, and other incidentals, are simply enormous and sudden.
It underscores the reality that Nigeria’s federal and state governments do not fund education adequately. The Federal Government owns 52 universities and grossly under-funds them. Regardless, it recklessly establishes new universities. In the past 10 years, it has established many specialised universities, using tertiary education to score cheap political points. Since 2009, it has not paid up the N1.2 trillion it agreed to under the MoU it signed with the Academic Staff Union of Universities on revitalisation and salary enhancement.
The Bola Tinubu-led Federal Government last week announced the commencement of the implementation of a 40 per cent automatic deduction from internally generated revenues of federal universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education. This will worsen the crisis.
At 20.1 million, Nigeria has the second highest number of out-of-school children in the world (UNESCO). Crises pervade all through the primary, secondary and tertiary education levels.
But education is critical to development. The World Bank says, “Tertiary education is instrumental in fostering growth, reducing poverty, and boosting shared prosperity. A highly skilled workforce, with lifelong access to a solid post-secondary education, is a prerequisite for innovation and growth.” In today’s knowledge-driven global economy therefore, everything should be done to revive and strengthen the education sector.
There is no easy way out though. The starting point is to stop creating public tertiary institutions, so that the existing ones can be properly funded. Indeed, some new ones should be scrapped and their students and faculty merged with others. First to go should be the new multiple military and paramilitary universities that are nothing but wasteful ego trips for their promoters.
The fee increments are astronomical and too sudden. The universities should drastically reduce them and introduce increments in small percentages.
The federal, state, and local governments should provide multi-layered funding for students, especially grants, and partial and full scholarships. Bursaries by state governments should be automatic for students. Supported by NGOs, philanthropists and faith-based institutions, the Federal Government should make its loan scheme available quickly; and states and LGs should follow suit.
Ultimately, through diverse funding options from public and private sources, all Nigerians desirous of tertiary education must not be denied.
