TUITION HIKE: An Open Letter to UDUS Management by Hussain Wahab

Pleading Piece on the Tuition Fees Hiked 

This is a sad note I wrote with a wailing pen when I thought of a locust beans seller who paid #40,000 as her child’s school fees. I say, “how much does she make in profit a year?”

This is a sympathetic piece to orphaned students who have nobody to offer him/her standard education but have to suffer in order to gain relevancy amongst peers.

This is a clarion call to the management of the most peaceful university that they should not forget the word ‘peace’ the school embedded in and this golden peace should not turn to pieces.

Let us consider the story of two brothers studying the same course in different federal university. One paying #19,000 in a well known and structured university and the other paying #50,000 in a less ranked institution. If you can tell me why, then you can solve the riddle.

How about we consider the message from a parent who works hundreds of miles before they could get something to eat? How can such a parent afford his children school fees at this exorbitant rate? This is a pleading to avoid what has become unaffordable.

School fees hike causes a headache to someone who has planned to drop out not because of GP or any other academic inclination but as a result of unaffordable tuition fees prior to the increment. What do you think will happen now when the fees rose high like a mountain?

This is a mournful ink of a poor student from Lagos or other southern part who’s not going to pay tuition fees alone but also pay transport fare worth #10,000; hostel ranging between #10,000 to #50,000; textbooks, wears and foodstuffs. This is a pleading that there is more apart from tuition fees.

This isn’t an attack on the “image” of the university, rather a pleading to the management to consider single mothers working extra miles to put smile on the children. They should look beyond the students whose governments pay their fees. Hustling students should be considerably considered.

UDUS students pay considerable amount ranging between #40,000 and #50,000 in their first year. They have the hope that the fees will soon be reduced to #20,000 in the subsequent years just like other federal institutions like OAU, UI, UNIMAID and ABU. Alas! They were wrong.  

Every time we boast of the “most peaceful.” I hope we’ll never get to a point where we will say, “UDUS, the most difficult and the unaffordable university in Nigeria.”

If this continues, I’m afraid, things might fall apart — for students.

Sincerely,

Hussain Wahab