Regime Of Fees And Attacks Olabisi Onabanjo Unifactory” Limited

By

Kola Ibrahim

kmarx4live@yahoo.com

 

It is highly ridiculous to hear that the management of Olabisi Onabanjo University has resolved to compete with private universities in terms of education commercialization. I am referring to the new attempt of the OOU management to hike fees payable by at least 500 percent. A new student who is paying less than twelve thousands will now cough out at least about N70, 000 while some students are to pay about N300, 000 as yearly pay.

 

This fee regime is nothing but anti-poor and nefarious. In a country with over 60 percent poor (living on less than N125 per day) while the minimum wage is les than N11, 000, the fee regime is to say the least insensitive. According to the management, the fees is necessary because the fortune of the university is dwindling with reducing subvention from management coupled with the decision of the NUC to half the population intake of the university. The management has been admitting tens of thousands of students not because they want to improve the admission of students but just to rake in more money from students many of who are learning under terrible conditions including lack of accommodation and acute shortage of learning facilities. Therefore, the management had turned the school to a factory where students are admitted in order to have enough resources to run the school. Now, when the NUC had commanded the school to reduce its intake, it now wants to shift the burden of generating the lost fund from the remaining students. This bizarre situation is further propelled by the nefarious cut in social service spending by the Ogun State government, the owner state. This manner of management of university smack of high level of mismanagement going on in our tertiary institutions. To now want to shift the burden of funding on poor students rather than ask for proper funding by the government is totally wrong. A government that establishes a public university must be ready to fund it. 

 

Despite billions of naira that had accrued to the purse of the state since 1999, it is very unfortunate that the state could not fund a free and functional education to the citizenry. Yet, we hear of lots of propaganda from the apologists of the state government commending the Gbenga Daniel’s government as being one of the best government in the country. Yet, in virtually all the state tertiary institution, education has been commercialized out of the reach of the poor people in the state. For instance, in Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), despite acute shortage of learning facilities including insufficient teaching staff, students are made to pay around N50, 000 as fees. Therefore, there is little difference between the public institutions and private ones. In fact, the new attempt is to make public education in accessible to a vast majority of the citizens majority of whom are living in absolute poverty, so as to lay the basis for the eventual privatization of these schools at cheap cost to the already rich few in the society. If the state government cannot fund a public university, there is no basis then for governance. The state government is rich enough to fund free, qualitative and functional education if the state resources are judiciously used in that direction. It is funny that despite the state government budgeting about 26 percent of the 2007 budget to education, this has resulted in chronic under funding of the university. This shows that the resources are being misused or misappropriated such that no matter the amount budgeted it is always corners by those in government.

 

What is happening in OOU and Ogun State is virtually replicating itself in other states and even at the federal level. For instance, in Lagos State, despite laying claim to being implementing Awo’s programmes has hiked fees in almost all the tertiary institutions in the state with Lagos State University students paying nothing less than N30, 000 as fees, as well as students of LASPOTECH, etc. also in Osun State, the just established state-owned university, with virtually no facility is charging nothing less than N150, 000 per students. Few weeks ago, LAUTECH students were asked to pay a whopping N40, 000 as minimum levy (from around N11, 000) for fresh students. In Obafemi Awolowo University, an attempt to commercialize education has meant attack on the students’ union which has seen three students’ leaders being in detention for the past over two months over trump up charges while thirteen students’ activists have been rusticated over the same charges. An attempt to introduce N40, 000 fee in Ahmadu Bello University has led to serious and violent resistance by the management. To add insult upon injury, the federal government has concluded plans to jerk up fees in all federal government owned institutions to at N40, 000. the irony of it all is that past governments that received lesser revenues have not gone to the extent to which the present government at all levels despite their claim of due process and rule of law, in cutting social spending to the bone; not even the much-hated Babangida regime that initiated the full scale neo-liberal policies.   

 

The nauseating aspect of it all is that the government is now competing with private institutions in fee hiking yet the increased budgetary allocations could not be accounted for. All this is an attempt to commercialize education out of the reach of the poor people. The acceptance of neo-liberal economic policies of commercialization, privatization and cut in social spending is behind these hiking of fees. This coupled with unprecedented corruption by politicians and school administrators has led to dilapidating facilities and falling standard of education. Unlike what the management of OOU wants us to believe that the new fee is to improve standard, the real reason is to cut spending as the thousands of students are made to live in degrading circumstances as a result of lack of hostel accommodation on campus (which led to the last student-community crisis few years ago).

 

Consequently, students’ leaders and union must fight for the reversal of not only the fee regime but also the capitalist neo-liberal education policies of education commercialization and privatization. It is unfortunate that the Nigerian students’ movement, NANS has collapsed such that its officers are running after politicians for pecuniary benefits even when the same persons are killing their colleagues. Virtually all structures of NANS from national to the zonal and local levels have almost collapsed. For instance, just few days ago, so sell outs in the name of NANS went to collect millions from a father Christmas governor in a north-western state in the name of organizing a kangaroo unity convention while the same has one of the worse education record in the country. Also, the NANS Zone D leadership (south west zone) that should be championing the struggle of students has turned to adventurers without any focus. They are busy looking for politicians that will invest in their personal lives while cutthroat fees are being push down on their fellow students. Even in schools where these “leaders” are, they could not lead the agitations of students showing how unpopular they are. This is why a new pan-Nigerian students’ movement is necessary. Genuine, radical students’ activists and organizations must be ready to lead this campaign because the struggle in the final analysis must not be left to each campus; it is a national policy that must be resisted nationally. Nigerian students must organize days of actions that will include rallies, symposia, lecture boycotts, picketing, protest marches to drive home the point that education is a social service that must be funded from the collective wealth of the country. Government at all levels must spend at least nothing less than 26 percent on education as prescribed by UNESCO coupled with democratic management by all stakeholders including students’ and staff unions’ representatives.

 

 

KOLA IBRAHIM

Education Rights Campaign (ERC)

Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife