Some students of the Lagos State University on Thursday staged another protest at the Government House, Ikeja, the office of the state Governor, Babatunde Fashola (SAN), over what they called government’s reluctance to reduce their hiked tuition fees.
The students, numbering about 200, stormed the governor’s office in three high-capacity buses at about 4.30pm, demanding the reduction of the fees.
They went there with items like mosquito nets, cooking pots and foodstuffs, vowing not to return home until the fees were reduced.
Some of them displayed placards with inscriptions such as: “Reduce LASU fees now” and “Education is our right”, among others.
The heavily armed security details at the Governor’s Office watched as the students danced to protest songs blaring from two large speakers they brought to the scene.
The situation caused a traffic snarl on the road leading directly to the Governor’s Office as vehicles trying to access the premises could not gain entrance.
Nurudeen Yusuf, the Lagos State University Student Union President, who led the protest, said the action was in response to government’s reluctance to resolve the fee issue.
Yusuf said the governor had two meetings with them and both parties had agreed on resolving the issue.
He said since they reached an agreement, the government had not done anything convincing to resolve the matter
He said: “We met with the governor on March 31 and April 3 and he told us that he would not reverse the fee totally and that we should come with proposals on what we think the new fees should be.
“We proposed N46,500 for returning students and N65,500 for fresh students and since April 24 when we submitted the proposal, what the government has been telling us is ‘very soon we will resolve it’.
“And we think the phrase ‘very soon’ is ambiguous as it could mean 2015 or even eternity.
“We are tired of all this insincerity.
“We want a reduction now.”
When told that a committee had been set up by the government to resolve the issue, the SUG president said it was ploy to deceive them.
He said the government constituted the committee only to pretend to be doing something when actually it was doing nothing.
Yusuf dismissed allegations that the tuition protests were politically motivated, saying it had nothing to do with politics but was about the future of the country’s youths.
The student union president contended that the hike had forced many poor students out of school and LASU might be turned to a university for the rich if nothing was done about it.
He said that the students would continue to hold the protests until their demands were met.
The state government had in 2012 increased the school’s tuition from N25,000 to between N195,000 and N350,000 .
Explaining the hike, the government had said it was not a unilateral decision but a recommendation by a panel set up to reposition the institution.
The students have staged series of protests at the governor’s office and on major roads against the non-reversal of the hike.
Aderemi Ibirogba, the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, had on Wednesday described the protests as unnecessary, saying government was taking steps to resolve the issue.
Ibirogba said a committee set up on the issue would submit its report on June 9, appealing for calm as government worked on a final resolution of the issue.
Receiving the students on Thursday, Ibirogba and his Ministry of Transportation counterpart, Kayode Opeifa, wondered why the issue of the school fee regime is now being orchestrated when even the first set of students that paid it are now in their 300 level.
They advised the students not to be used by mischief makers who may want to politicize the issue for their selfish ends, especially now that the school has come out of the many troubles it faced when the fee was first introduced.
According to the Commissioners: “The school has now surmounted the many troubles it faced in 2012 based on the focus and the creative approach used to solve the academic, social and environmental issues that bedeviled the school at that time.”
They said the creativity adopted in exempting old students from the fee, the increase in scholarship budget from N700 million to N1.2 billion, the increase in bursary, the ongoing infrastructural development projects in the school and the deliberate stemming of the consistent flouting of the NUC admission regulations, have all added to the reaccreditation of almost all the courses in the school.
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