“If School fees is N300,000, how can the children of someone who earns N50,000 a month be able to pay such a fee?”
The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, has expressed concern about the potential for a significant 40 to 50 percent increase in student dropout rates within the next two years if the Federal Government does not intervene to halt the ongoing tuition fee increases in universities.
Osodeke made this known while speaking on the current situation in the Nigerian education sector.
READ MORE: ASUU, ASUP Express Doubts Over Student Loan By President Tinubu.
According to him, the heavy fees being imposed on students across the nation would result in a massive dropout of students, due to their inability to cope with the payments.
He said, “If nothing is done about these heavy fees being introduced by schools all over the country, in the next two or three years, more than 40 to 50 per cent of these children who are in school today will drop out.”
The university union president also cautioned about a potential nationwide issue if his forecast of a significant increase in students dropping out of school becomes a reality.
He explained that dropping out would lead to unemployment, making them vulnerable to wrongdoers.
“When they drop out, they will become a big feed for recruitment for those who want this country to be ungovernable.
“This is what we are saying, create the environment we have in the 60s and 70s. When I was a student, the government was paying me for being a student. Let’s have an environment where the children of the poor can have access to education.
However, he appealed to the government to boost the allocation for education in the budget to at least 15 percent of the total budget.
He criticized the meager 3.8 percent allocated to education in the last budget, emphasizing that an increased budget allocation for education would ease the financial burden on parents who are currently grappling with high tuition fees for their children.
Speaking further, he expressed pessimism that the student loan policy of the government would fail. He added that for the loan policy to work, it has to be reviewed.
“When you are talking about student loans, you have to be comprehensive. There is nothing to show that it would work.
“There is a need for a review. Check what happened in the past and see how we can move forward. But for us, our idea is that instead of calling it a loan, let us call it a grant.
“If you look at the conditions, 90 per cent of the students will not have access to that loan. The condition that you must have parents who earn less than N500,000 per annum [is harsh]. How many people earn less than N500,000 per annum?”, he said.
