1st November, 2011
The affordability of university education allowed Nigeria’s first generation of graduates attain that status while government scholarship helped most of them to study abroad.
Why then would anybody want to deprive the present generation the right to affordable university education?
When the cost of living started reaching for the sky and the middle class was being destroyed by government policies, we knew it was just a matter of time before it affects education adversely, but nobody thought it could be as bad as this.
When Kwara and Osun states established their own universities and charged tuition fees close to what private varsities charge, we thought it won’t spread to others just yet or perhaps it was because those institutions were newly established.
Government at all levels have always given the excuse of lack of funds for the dismal state of our universities and have often told the university administrators to look inwards to generate funds to run these institutions. So far as we know, no state has totally withdrawn from funding its university, at least to the extent that it would be affordable for people who want to attend the schools, especially indigenes of the states.
As private varsities charge fees that run in some cases into millions of naira annually per student, the majority of Nigerians had relied on the state and federal universities for respite and now, the states are joining the bandwagon.
We can’t understand a situation where a state has to care for its indigenes, hence charge fees to cover costs of the non-indigenes it is spending money on. If this is the way we want to carry on our affairs, then this unity in diversity that our leaders often mouth remains rhetoric. What would now happen to those who cannot pay the required fees when students’ loans are no more granted? How many state governments give bursaries and scholarships to their wards in other states where school fees are charged? What now happens to those poorly paid workers who were hoping to obtain a university degree to enable them raise their status in life?
Last week, students of the Lagos State University, LASU, staged a protest to Alausa secretariat to register their disenchantment with the new school fees announced by the authorities of the varsity. The university had increased its fees from between N25,000 and N50,000, depending on the course of study, to between N250,000 to over N300,000.
Many of the protesters and parents think this astronomical. We think so too.
Agreed, the state needs funds to run its university but a gradual increase in tuition fees would have been better. Non-indigenes too should have been informed of the proposed increase while arrangements are made to cushion the effects of the increase for indignes.
The fact that Lagosians who attend schools in other states are made to pay for not being indigenes is enough reason for the Lagos State to charge fees in its schools.
But then, what constitutes an indigene? What about those born in Lagos of parents who are non-indigenes but have made the state their permanent homes? What happens to those who are non-indigenes in Lagos or any other state for that matter?
And the response by government officials has been nothing but insensitive, especially when we consider that such officials were able to get education through scholarships that were available in time past. For a lawmaker to say that tertiary education is not for everybody is taking insensitivity too far and the protesting students of LASU deserve an apology.
With over a hundred universities in Nigeria, yet over half the population cannot attend such universities due to the prohibitive fees they charge. Does this not tell us something about ourselves?
Everyday more private universities spring up while the level of illiteracy increases. Religious groups are establishing universities and members of the congregation cannot afford the cost of schools which was partly built with their tithes and offerings. More Nigerian parents are opting to send their children out of the country for tertiary education while those that cannot afford it look on helplessly and yet we have a vision of becoming one of the world’s biggest economies by 2020. What a dream!