TRIBUNE
The Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVCNUs) has made it clear that it is no longer possible for any federal university in Nigeria to sustain operation again without increasing its obligatory and some other fees being charged to students.
The Secretary-General of the committee, Prof Yakubu Ochefu, shared this position in an exclusive interview with the Tribune Online at the weekend, maintaining that the old fees regime in any of the federal universities is no longer relevant in the current economic reality in the country.
According to him, it is expensive to run universities. They hardly shut down a day. They run an almost 24-hour service. Even when the students are on holiday, the universities keep their doors open.
“So, the cost of running universities just like every other educational institution in the country is huge and now the situation has become almost unbearable, especially since the removal of fuel subsidy which is continuously pushing up the cost of goods and services in the country on daily basis,” he pointed out.
While explaining that it’s not that the administrators of various federal universities and their management teams are wicked as some people made to believe for increasing their obligatory fees, Ochefu said they have to do that because they have no better option if they want to sustain operation and provide quality services.
He said even at that, they still heavily subsidized their services to students as if they should charge commensurable fees, they would have charged up to four times or more of their new fees.
According to him, universities charging lower fees as some had done already is because the Federal Government is still responsible for the payment of salaries of workers and also providing some running costs even though grossly inadequate and still gives other supports through TETFund and some other intervention agencies.
He said if not for all these, public universities would have been charging high fees like the private universities do because tuition fees would have been where the salaries of workers would come from and that would have been passed on to parents and students.
READ THE FULL STORY IN TRIBUNE
