The students lamented that the about 300 percent increase in the hostel fee came amid growing hardship and rising prices of commodities in Nigerian markets.
Students of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) under the umbrella of the Students’ Solidarity Group Against Fee Hike have rejected the astronomical hike in hostel fees by the management of the school’s College of Medicine.
The university had in a memo announced that the management of the college had approved a consolidated hostel fee of N120,000 for all MBBS/BDS undergraduate students who desired to stay in the hostel for one year and N100,000 for BSc students who desired to stay in the hostel for nine months.
Rejecting the fee hike, the Students’ Solidarity Group Against Fee Hike Secretariat in a statement described the hike as provocative, saying that while they were expecting the management of the university to fulfil the promise it made at its only meeting with the students’ delegation, the school management rather announced a “300 percent” increase in the hostel fees.
The students lamented that the about 300 percent increase in the hostel fee came amid growing hardship and rising prices of commodities in Nigerian markets.
“We find this development very provocative but we are not surprised as it is only confirming our prediction as correct.
“We have predicted correctly and made this known to everyone who cared to listen, that the school fee increment is not the final destination of the Professor Folasade Ogunsola-led administration and it is not the only fee that would be hiked.
“We said every other living and learning service students use, will experience a serious hike.
“Accommodation fees will shoot up. Field trips, dues, laboratory costs will increase. Food prices on and off-campus will be inflated.
“Transportation fare will shoot up by at least 200 percent and these increments will come with damning social menaces that will affect all of us in and outside the University community,” part of the statement read.
The statement added, “You do not need a degree from Harvard to understand the consequences that would follow the school fee hike. Lecturers will be forced to commercialize anything they can find, they will sell “hand-outs” to students openly, to also settle their own bills.
“They will pay these fees too as Masters and PhD students. Many of our lecturers also have children in the school. A lecturer who is paid N200,000 will be forced to cough out over N190,000 fees. How logical is this?”
The student group noted that a few students who “manage not to drop out, will be forced to become compulsory hustlers, understandably so. Sexual harassment and other corrupt practices for grades will increase and as against the lies peddled around by propagandists, the standard of education received at UNILAG and every other school experiencing this oppressive hike, will drop rapidly.
“Anyone not considering the social consequences attached to pricing education out of the reach of the poor majority, is dishonest and not deserving of any administrative role in any University in the World”.
It continued, “We consider the fee hike and other hikes they are yet to be announced as economically inconsiderate and very provocative, as the Management is even going ahead to hike despite its promise to meet the students’ delegation.
“We expect that our teachers would be better examples of being fidel and not otherwise.
“It is to this end, we reject the unreasonable hostel fee hike; from N25,000 to N100,000 and N120,000 and we ask that the Management fulfill its promise to reconvene the meeting with the delegation, within the shortest possible time like it promised. It’s 2 weeks already.”
The students called for a dialogue to resolve the accommodation fee hike issue and other issues in the school but warned that the management of the institution should “not stretch us”.
“Do not provoke us,” the students’ body added.
