We publish the statement of the Workers and Youth Solidarity Network (WYSN) in Nigeria
The N50,000 acceptance fee demanded by the University of Ibadan is a fraud! Students must organize and resist this broad-day corruption now!
- We reject the re-introduction of acceptance fees in public universities
- We condemn the plan of the UI management to deny children of poor people access to education
- For a one-day lecture boycott and mass protest now!
The Workers and Youths Solidarity Network condemns in totality the N50,000 acceptance fee demanded by the management of the University of Ibadan from the newly admitted students. We hold that no university should charge any fee from students to accept the admission offered to them. In line with the directive of the federal House of Representatives on the eve of 2020 that any form of acceptance fee should be scrapped, we demand that the UI management immediately halt the collection of this fraudulent fee and adequately refund the ones collected. We consider this singular act of UI management as an attempt to deter students of the common and ordinary working people from access to the quality education they deserve! Hence, we call on the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and the University of Ibadan Students’ Union to immediately declare a one-day lecture boycott and mass protest to press home this demand.
We refer to the statement published on the website of the University of Ibadan, calling on the newly-admitted students to pay a non-refundable sum of N50,000 to accept the admission offered to them. We can also recall that in 2020 and as reported by ThisDay Newspaper, the Federal House of Representatives ordered the cancellation of all forms of acceptance fees in federal universities and ordered the refund of such fees to students that year. We also recorded that some schools are obliged to that policy. However, we are shocked as this fee miraculously found its way back into the University of Ibadan system where students are mandated to pay a whopping N50,000 as an acceptance fee. We condemn in totality this dubious and fraudulent attempt to milk-dry the new intakes in the quest to get higher education.
Likewise, we see this as an attempt to deny the children of working people who live on a merger N30,000 minimum wage access to quality education. This also shows the current level of the Nigerian education sector which prioritizes profits instead of developing the innate potential of youths and young people. In the past, this fee and other arbitrary levies have denied creative, intellectual, intelligent and innovative individuals access to education that can further polish their skills for national development because they couldn’t afford to pay the fees demanded of them. If the management of UI isn’t curtailed, thousands of useful youths will be denied access to quality education and will be left to roam about the street. Of course, this will contribute to the already-high crime and corruption rate in society because an idle hand is the devil’s workshop.
The reintroduction of acceptance fees and hikes and tuition fees across federal and state universities in Nigeria calls for immediate action and intervention. This is why we are calling on the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Students’ Unions, Academic Unions and other well-meaning Nigerians to demand a free, quality, functional, public-funded and democratically managed education sector. Therefore, the NANS should immediately call for a nationwide lecture boycott and mass protest now, involving essential unions and stakeholders, to demand an end to fee hikes, illegal fees and gross underfunding of public education. This demand should also be linked to the payment of backlogs of salaries of the members of ASUU being owed by the federal government.
Damilola Owot
Secretary
Workers and Youths Solidarity Network (WYSN)
