FG disavows hiking university tuition fee

Stanley Nwanekezie October 4, 2018

62 1 minute read

There is no plan to increase the tuition to N350, 000 per session as claimed by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, the Federal Ministry of Education claimed on Wednesday.

The ministry said the establishment of an Education Bank was already in the pipeline.

Mr Sonny Echono, Permanent Secretary of the ministry, stated this in Abuja while reacting to the allegations made by the ASUU.

He said the re-establishment of the Education Bank was to provide students with loans and other resources through a public-private partnership.

Echono, who spoke at a World Teachers’ Day Symposium, said teachers that did not have the requisite qualifications would be flushed out of the system by 2020.

In his words, “The Federal Government did not and has no intention of introducing tuition fees in our universities, not to even mention the figure of N350, 000. This can easily be verified. The students have just registered for school and their parents are aware of how much they paid.

“What is true is that because of the commitment of the present administration to guarantee the right of the Nigerian children not only to education, but to be positively engaged, the President directed that the ministry, along with the Ministry of Finance, should jointly organise a workshop that will come up with sustainable and very workable recommendation on funding education in Nigeria.”