ASUU Opposes KASU Fee Increment, Warns 75% Of Students May Drop Out

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Kaduna State University (KASU) Chapter, says 75 per cent of the university’s students may drop out of school due to the monumental increment in tuition fees.

Chairman of the Union, Peter Adamu, said in a statement in Kaduna that the students might have to leave because their parents could not afford to pay.

Adamu urged the state government to rescind its decision to hike the tuition fees and engage relevant stakeholders on the issue in line with its Open Government Partnership.

According to him, education is a right and not a privilege, funding of education as stipulated in the Nigerian Constitution is the sole responsibility of government, not parents.

He said the university had over 19,000 students, with more than 17,000 of them from the state, adding that 70 per cent of the indigenous students were sons and daughters of peasant farmers, civil servants and petty traders.

The ASUU chairman said the increase would further widen the existing gap between the rich and the poor.

He pointed out that the consequences of the upward review would be unquantifiable.

Adamu said the purported scholarship programme unveiled by the government was a smokescreen to justify the increase.

He said that data from the State Scholarship and Loans Board showed that between 2017 and 2020, only about 13.29 per cent of the over 19,000 students benefited from the scholarship scheme.

He added that in 2020, students were promised laptop loans for online lectures at the peak of COVID-19 pandemic, but none of the students benefited.

Recall that the Commissioner of Education, Shehu Makarfi on Monday, confirmed the tuition fees increment in all the state-owned tertiary institutions.

Makarfi explained that the decision was to reposition the schools to deliver quality skills and training to solve 21st century challenges.

He said that KASU had been directed to increase the tuition fees from N24,000 to a minimum of N150,000.

He added that the minimum fees for National Diploma and Higher National Diploma programmes had been pegged at a minimum of N75,000 and N100,000 respectively.

The commissioner also said that the National Certificate in Education programme was also increased to N75,000.