UI: A CALL FOR THE CANCELLATION OF ACCEPTANCE FEE ACROSS NIGERIA
We, the Concerned Students’ Against Tuition Fee movement finds it imperative to resolutely oppose the decision to charge prospective students into the University of Ibadan, as well as the determined act to hike the same fee from #37,500 to #50,000. As a very concerned movement, we are opposed to the commercialization of education in the many forms it may appear.
We strongly recognize that accessible education is a fundamental human right and should be made free and accessible to all. Against this backdrop, we at CSATF vehemently condemn the levy of acceptance fee charges, now up to the sum of #50,000, on the prospective students who are currently in the final stage of their admission processing at the University of Ibadan.
We consider the payment of acceptance fee arbitrary simply because it is not a payment for any known service rendered by the University to the prospective students. We, at CSATF, believe that since these intending students have been made to go through the rigorous process of writing three different examinations; including the Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (SSCE), University Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), and ultimately the Post-UTME examinations, all in a bid to willfully secure and merit admissions into the University, it is therefore nothing short of injustice that these prospective students are levied with a fee for which they have not received any actual service.
Given the deepening economic crisis, we at CSATF consider the fee construct as ever more unjust considering that all Universities received a directive from the National University Commission (NUC) to stop the collection of acceptance fees from prospective students. As confirmed by the National University commission’s (NUC) Executive Secretary, Professor Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, on 13th February 2020, in an interview with the NTA’s Platform, a part of the statement reads, “we (NUC) have received a communication from the Senate and from the National Assembly and we have communicated to all Universities in the country to stop charging acceptance fee henceforth”.
It is disturbing that three years after the issuance of such a directive, acceptance fees are still being collected by Universities and even more disconcerting is its increase from #37,500 in the previous year, to #50, 000 as in the case of the University of Ibadan; a fee which is way above the minimum wage in Nigeria. We can only consider this an attempt to commercialize education and make it the exclusive reserve of the haves.
We therefore call on the administrators of the University of Ibadan to abide by the directive from the National University Commission and to stop the collection of acceptance fees in the University. We also seize this opportunity to reiterate that education is a right and should be made free and accessible to all by the Government. We call on the leadership of the Staff Unions at the University of Ibadan and across Nigeria to increase pressure on all the public Universities and on Government across all levels to stop the collection of the imposed fee.
We recognize the fact that the need for the collection of acceptance fee may be connected with the problems of underfunding bedeviling Nigerian universities. Despite this, we hold that the imposition of the acceptance fee and other unjust fees on students is tantamount to levying students and their parents to pay for the failure of successive governments, all who have refused to adequately fund public education including universities.
Note – CSATF is an acronym for a newly formed pro-students and workers campaign platform called CONCERNED STUDENTS AGAINST TUITION FEES. CSATF opposes commercialization of university education and insists that education is not a commodity but social service.
Signed
Aduwo Ayodele
CSATF Coordinator
Kareem Abdullahi
CSATF Secretary
To join and help build CSATF, contact the following numbers: 09052902527, 08106421540.
