Calls on Students and
Workers to protest this latest onslaught on the right to education
PRESS STATEMENT
The Education Rights Campaign (ERC) strongly condemns the increase
of acceptance fee and indigene verification fee by the authorities of the Lagos
State University (LASU). The acceptance fee for fresh students of the
University was recently increased from N10, 000 to N20, 000 while the indigene
verification fee was increased from N1, 000 to N5, 000.
As far as the ERC is concerned, these increments are exploitative
and unacceptable. After the massive defeat its tuition hike policy suffered
last year, these increments represent a
renewed attempt by the LASU management with the State government’s backing no
doubt to increase the cost of education through the backdoor. The ERC demands
an immediate and unconditional reversal of these increases and a refund paid to
any fresh student who might have been compelled to pay.
With these increases however, Governor Akinwumi Ambode proves the
ERC right that he would inevitably pursue the same neo-liberal and anti-poor
education policies as his predecessor who turned Lagos to a city in which the
poor had no stake. While campaigning, Governor Ambode repeatedly promised
Lagosians not to increase fees in LASU. But once in power, he has turned round
to do the opposite. Students and workers in LASU should demonstrate to Ambode
the consequence of failing to keep one’s promises by responding with mass
struggle, boycott, strikes and protests.
As experience shows, only mass resistance can convince the state
government and LASU management that their education commercialization policy is
unacceptable. Mass struggle is the only language oppressors understand. On this
basis, we call on students and workers of the University to embark on mass
protest, boycotts and strikes to compel the authorities to rescind this
ill-thought, mindless and anti-poor fee hike policy.
By targeting only fresh students, the government and LASU
management hope to divide students. This was the same tactics they employed in
2011. We urge all students, both fresh and returning students, to unite to
resist this policy. Otherwise if they get away with this, they would gain
confidence to launch general neo-liberal attacks on all students as well as
workers.
These latest increases are coming barely one year after a mass
struggle of students, education workers and civil society groups including the
Education Rights Campaign (ERC) rocked the institution and the entirety of
state over an increase in the tuition fee from N25, 000 to N348, 750 which the
Lagos state government introduced in 2011 allegedly in order to transform LASU
into a so-called “world class University”. Not only was the government forced
to reverse the fees after students protested for months and workers unions
downed tools in an impressive show of class solidarity, it also had to cough
out millions to pay a refund to all students who had paid the fee since 2011.
So popular and widely supported was the struggle of the students
that had the government not reversed the fees last year, the ruling party in
the state could have been roundly defeated at the March 2015 elections. Now
having survived the elections and returned to power, the government hiding
behind its minions in the LASU administration is willing to give the anti-poor
policy of fee hike another shot.
LASU management’s justification for these criminal increases is
vexatious and ridiculous to say the least. In a recent comment credited to the
University’s Registrar Mr. Akin Lewis, the University made the claim that
payment of acceptance is a norm and that it has the right to increase fees. Our
position in the Education Rights Campaign (ERC) is that education is a social
responsibility which government must discharge to the citizens using the
collective wealth produced by the labour of workers. It is not a business and
students are not customers. Therefore no University management, or any academic
institution for that matter, has a right to increase fees. Moreso, the
insistence that a University management has a right to increase fees, without
consulting students and their Union, betrays the despotic and undemocratic
characteristics of the managements of academic institutions in the country.
As far as the ERC is concerned, payment of acceptance fee which is
painfully a norm in academic institutions across the country is illegal and
plain daylight robbery. It has only being allowed to stay because of the
All of these multifarious fees charged by academic institutions
are merely ridiculous efforts by managements of academic institutions to raise
their Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) against the background of chronic
underfunding of public education by government at all levels. This is why the
ERC fights for adequate funding of education.
We also call for democratic control of resources by elected
representatives of workers and students as it is a fact that the allocations to
schools are usually mismanaged and looted by the administrators. Instead of justifying what is no more than a
ridiculous fee policy as LASU’s Registrar is trying to do, University officials
who still have conscience should rather join efforts of students and education
workers to fight for an increase in education funding.
Hassan Taiwo Soweto Michael Ogundele
National Coordinator (07033697259) National Secretary
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