‘we no go gree! We must fight this out!’ These and many more has been the sayings of both the regular and part-time students of University of Jos (UniJos) who has been on three month break that started after an 18 month session. It was at the middle of the break a rumor turned true that school fee has been increased with over 200%. It was a great surprise when student from home read in the punch news paper published on the 10
th of august 2010.
The student has been using every medium to communicate within themselves. Several meeting among different student associations has been held and messages has been going round with the urge to pass it on to other and warned that no student should pay the tuition fee until the problem is been resolve. “Not at this time that we are just recovering from great losses from crisis that claim our property and life of our friends. Many of our parents have lost their jobs, and many businesses have been affected.”
The school authority defended their action; saying that the increment was necessary, because a session was canceled as a result of strikes and various unrest in Jos and it’s metropolis, and they have loss so much in the process, they added that it has been showed that cheap/free education is what leads to useless/unusable graduates, and that as been what has been bastardizing our educational system in Nigeria we cannot pay our lecturers a living wage, we cannot develop our learning resources and we cannot provide modern research facilities. This and others are what this increment is setout to reduce.
Views of many, if this increment is finally implemented is that; cultism might be re-enforced, raping, arm robbery, exam malpractices, kidnapping of staffs, blockings, etc would definitely be encouraged. This is because some poor desperate students would rather die in such than withdraw from the school system due to inability to pay school fees. Beside these, death of parents will increase due to high blood pressure and stroke as a result of much thinking of how and when to get children school fees.
