EDITORIAL: Alarming Is Not The Word!

THE increase in the fees for nursing students at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Ile-Ife, is amazing. Tuition fees are to go up from N250,000 to N840,000 in one fell swoop.

In a country wracked by a decline in purchasing power as a result of a painful 42% devaluation, this is very insensitive.

The students at OAUTH are predominantly from outside of whatever remains of the middle class. Student loan or not how on earth are they going to underwrite the new fees? The contentious student loan itself has only five billion Naira earmarked for it in the 2024 budget proposal. Small change given the number of students who will need it.

The Jack up in fees is a desecration of the political position of Chief Obafemi Awolowo after whom the university is named. He must be squirming in his grave. In addition, this is coming from a government whose election manifesto committed it admirably to the development of a social market economy. 

The increase in fees must be reversed. It will further widen class inequalities in a society already undergoing great stress.

The government should increase the education budget by mounting a ferocious cost-cutting exercise in the public sector and by implementing the report of the Oransaye committee on the costs of the machinery of government. Implementing the report is long overdue.

Education is an investment needed to make the country competitive in a brutally competitive world. And there is no alternative to increasing quality spending on education.

This ill thought out increase in fees must be reversed immediately.