ASUU, Kaduna University Students Reject El-Rufai’s 500% Tuition Fee Increment

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Kaduna State University (KASU), and the students have rejected the proposed 500 percent increase in the tuition fee by the government.

They maintained that if the monumental school fees increase was allowed to stand, it would force about 75 percent of the students of the university to drop out of school, adding that it will lead to massive youth unemployment and restiveness.

ASUU Branch Chairman, Dr. Peter Adamu, lamented that the consequences of the upward review of the school fees would be unquantifiable.

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He urged the state government to reverse its decision, adding that it was not the best time to increase tuition fees because of the present economic instability in the country.

The ASUU Chairman argued that education should not be for revenue generation and called on the government to look for other better ways of funding the system without unleashing untold hardship on the students and their parents.

One of the students of the university, Asmau Usman, decried that most of them came from a poor background and their parents could not afford the over 500 percent increased fees.

He maintained that the scholarship programme of the state government could not cater to a large number of students, noting that only a few of them were beneficiaries.

The Kaduna State Commissioner for Education, Shehu Muhammad, in his defense of the decision of the government, argued that the amount being paid by the students was no longer sustainable due to the enormous challenges of the school.

He explained that increasing the tuition fees was in line with current economic realities and not in any way aimed at unleashing suffering on the students and their parents.

Muhammad stressed that there was nowhere in the country where state universities received a token of N26,000 as school fees across the board.

He, however, hinted that the state government has created other social intervention programmes for the students, including scholarships and loan schemes among others.

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Kaduna State University has about 19,000 student population, out of which close to 17, 000 of them are indigenes.

As a state-owned tertiary institution, the annual school fees being paid by students over the years were pegged at N26,000 across the board while the government augmented what was left.

Recently, the state government announced an increase in tuition fees in the university to enable it to meet up the demands of the present situation.

According to the proposed new tuition fees, indigenous students studying social science courses are to pay about N150,000 while their counterparts in medicine and other science courses will pay between N170, 000 and above as annual fees.