by Anyanwu Fortune
Since September 2011, when the Lagos State
Government released its white paper to the University management,
specifying its views on the visitation panel set to the university in 2009, mixed
feelings have continued to trail some sections of the panel’s
recommendations. According to the white paper
entitled: ‘‘Government views on the report
of the visitation panel to Lagos State University, September 2011’’,
terms and references iii, made clarifications of the new regime of tuition
fees among other things.
It observed that between January 1999 and
December 2009, the period specified in the panel’s T of R for this
assignment, the total disbursement from developing Fund to LASU for capital
project was Two billion, twenty-three million, seventy-five
thousand, two hundred and fifty-four Naira. In view of the enormous financial
commitment required to run a university among other competing demands in
public sector governance, government was advised to review the
subsidy in tuition from 12% to 35% of actual tuition which ranges from one
hundred and twenty five thousand to four hundred thousand Naira respectively
per session.
In the last couple of months, LASU have
suddenly turned ‘young Turks’ agitating, fighting for their rights for
school fees reversal between January 22-23, till the present time ,
June, 5, 2014, they have neither retreated nor surrender. In fact, the
recent protest by the students which was disrupted by the police use of tear gas
canisters around Bolande – Oshodi axis on June 2, 2014 seems to be
another justification for our sobriquets.
Meanwhile, the management team headed by
the Vice Chancellor, Prof . Obafunwa, has been very tenacious to
annihilate this scourge, as could be seen in its slogan ‘"LASU……Repositioning
for Excellence’’
Currently, LASU is been classified as Lagos
State University, as the school seems to have more traits of a typical
private Nigerian University than those of public university. The fees have
been hiked by more than 1000 percent with an average student paying as
high as N250,000, as against the previous fees of N25,000. Consequently, a
university that used to be boost over 25,000 undergraduate students and
several diploma students, now has less than 13,000 students with less than
1,300 applicants seeking admission.
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