No to Fee Increment in Lagos State University
Education Rights Campaign (ERC)
November 23, 2011
PRESS STATEMENT
No to Fee Increment in Lagos State University
We call on Students and Parents to resist with protracted mass activities
Proscription of Students’ Union Is Undemocratic
The Education Rights Campaign (ERC) strongly condemns the directive by the Lagos State University Management that the new students of the university pay the new fees which is still under contention. This directive as contained in a bulletin released on Tuesday, November 22, 2011 mandated the new students to commence their registration and payment of school fees on or before Wednesday, November 30, 2011. The bulletin went further to state that new students who fail to pay at the expiration of the deadline would automatically forfeit their admission as the new session will commence on December 5, 2011.
The new fee regime as contained in a release made by the university management October, 2011 will have students of Arts/Education, Social and Management Sciences, Law, Communication/Transport, Science, Engineering and Medicine pay N193,750, N223,750, N248,750, N238,750, N258,750, N298,750 and N348,750 respectively as against the present fees which ranges from N25,000 to N45,000. This represents a 725% increase! The new fees include overcharged and illegal fees like N15, 000 for Teaching Practice/Field Trip, N50, 000 for Moot Court Fee for Law students, N2, 500 for General Studies, N10, 000 for Caution Fee, N20, 000 for Acceptance Fee, N10, 000 for registration fee among many other obnoxious fees.
We wish to reiterate our stand that the fee increment is another attempt by the Lagos State Government to commercialize education out of the reach of children of the poor and the working masses. This attack on education is coming from a major opposition party, the Action Congress of Nigeria which lay claim to late Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s philosophy of free education. Presently, Lagos State University is characterized with overcrowded classrooms, inadequate lecture halls, water-logged environment (as a result of poor drainage system), ill-equipped libraries and laboratories, inadequate teaching and non-teaching staff, lack of transportation facilities, poor sport facilities, poor ICT services among others.
The directive by the university management is absolutely unacceptable as the new students chose Lagos State University as their choice university when registering for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) before April, 2011 and sat for the LASU POST-UTME in September, 2011 on the basis of the old fee of N25, 000. It is therefore unjust and callous to ask the new students to pay the outrageous fees after they have been offered admission.
It should also be recalled that following mass protests and demonstrations by students, the Lagos State House of Assembly had set up a committee on Wednesday, October 26, 2011 to look into the Fee Hike Crisis and submit its recommendations within two weeks. It is quite pathetic that up till now, the committee is yet to submit its report and the house is also yet to pass a resolution on the issue.
ERC also condemns the purported proscription of the Students’ Union by the university management and Lagos State government as undemocratic and illegal. The Students’ Union is the democratic platform of the generality of the students and not a puppet in the hands of the management/government. Students have a right to union that is independent, democratic and free from all repressive interventions of the LASU management and the Fashola-led government. This action by the ACN-led government is reminiscent of the dark ages of the past military juntas. We call on the generality of the students to ignore the proscription and continue to democratically use the union as their platform to continue the struggle to defeat the new fee regime.
We call on all working class parents who are already overburdened by the multi-tax policy and other anti-poor policies of the Lagos State Government, and LASU Staff Unions (ASUU, NASU, SSANU and NAAT) to openly declare their support for the students against the fee hike. We also call on the parents of the new students to disregard the directive by the university management and join in the struggle for the reversal of the fee increment.
OUR DEMANDS
We therefore make the following demands: