Don’t Ignite Unrest with UNILAG Hostel Fees Hike, Students Tell Management

Students at the University of Lagos have voiced strong opposition to the circular allegedly circulated by the management proposing the hike in hostel fees.

In a statement issued by the secretariat of the Students’ Solidarity Group Against Fee Hike, the students described the hostel as provocative and would further worsen the hardship and suffering in the school.

Part of the statement read, “We have just learnt that the Management has announced a 300 per cent increase in hostel fees. This was seen in a circular shared around campus, especially at the College of Medicine, Idi-Araba campus.

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“We find this development very provocative but we are not surprised as it is only confirming our prediction as correct.

We have predicted correctly and made this known to everyone who cared to listen, that the school fee increment is not the final destination of the Professor Folasade Ogunsola-led administration and it is not the only fee that would be hiked. We said every other living and learning service students use, will experience a serious hike.

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‘Accommodation fees will shoot up. Field trips, dues, laboratory costs will increase. Food prices on and off-campus will be inflated. Transportation fee will shoot up by at least 200 per cent and these increments will come with damning social menaces that will affect all of us in and outside the University community.

“You do not need a degree from Harvard to understand the consequences that would follow the school fee hike. Lecturers will be forced to commercialise anything they can find, they will sell ‘hand-outs’ to students openly, to also settle their own bills. They will pay these fees too as Masters and PhD students. Many of our lecturers also have children in the school. A lecturer who is paid 200,000 will be forced to cough out over 190,000 fees. How logical is this?

“The few students who manage not to drop out, will be forced to become compulsory hustlers, understandably so. Sexual harassment and other corrupt practices for grades will increase and as against the lies peddled around by propagandists, the standard of education received at UNILAG and every other schools experiencing this oppressive hike, will drop rapidly. Anyone not considering the social consequences attached to pricing education out of the reach of the poor majority, is dishonest and not deserving of any administrative role in any University in the World.

“We consider the fee hike and other hikes they are yet to be announced as economically inconsiderate and very provocative, as the Management is even going ahead to hike despite its promise to meet the students’ delegation. We expect that our teachers would be better examples of being fidel and not otherwise.

“It is to this end, we reject the unreasonable hostel fee hike; from 25,000 to 100,000 and 120,000 and we ask that the Management fulfill its promise to reconvene the meeting with the delegation, within the shortest possible time like it promised. It’s 2 weeks already.

“The good students of UNILAG are democrats and we believe in dialogue. Do not stretch us. Do not provoke us.”