Education-Nigeria - Education has been variously agreed to be a social service; a social service in the sense that beneficiaries need not pay through their noses to obtain such services. The government play a major role in offsetting the bills for the provision of educational services. For instance, many Nigerians in the post-colonial era benefitted immensely from government subsidies, or outright scholarship, to study at various levels. Education was heavily subsidised for the citizens who were opportune to avail themselves of the opportunities. Parents did not have to suffer so much to send their children to school, provided they meet the required standards to proceed to the desired level. Those who benefitted from this system usually speak with nostalgia, which they refer to as 'the good old days', when tuition, accommodation fees, and cost of living generally was generally good, and not of great worries to parents and students.

However, the scenario has become the reverse in the nation's education system. Of special focus is the university system, where strikes and other forms of crises occasioned by under-funding have caused the institutions to shut down for many months to draw government's attention to the plight of these institutions. Still fresh in the minds of Nigerians is the five-month old industrial action, during which all the state universities in the S/East were shut down. The lecturers were forced to go back to the trenches to agitate for better wages and implementation of earlier agreements with the university proprietors. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the umbrella body for the teaching staff of Nigerian universities have been on the forefront of these agitations. The five state governors of this region were adamant, as they all turned deaf ears to this legitimate demand for a better welfare package by the aggrieved lecturers.

Apart from the demand for the implementation of the ASUU/ FG agreement, the aggrieved lecturers urged the five governors of the zone to address the "rot, deceit and neglect" of state- owned universities arising from what they described as "criminal under-funding of the institutions". To push their demands, the union alleged that staffing in all the S/East state universities is "utterly dismal" as a result of the conscious government policy not to attract or retain the appropriate staff in number and quality. For instance, the Union said for a standard student population of not less than 30,000 (regular and part time) the Abia State University has just "63 professors, 32 of whom are permanent, while the remaining have been borrowed , either as adjunct or contract staff". The union also disclosed that funding has remained "dismal and tragic with a paltry monthly subversion of N100,000,000- far less than what is required to pay salaries alone in the university", adding that in the last three years, there had been absolutely no capital grant for infrastructural development from the Abia State government to the institution.

The quantum of economic waste and time lost to pockets of strikes in these universities and others over the years have taken a toll, not only on the system, but on the nation in general.

It is not only the agitations of the lecturers that shut the system down. Students have also contributed their own, by way of demonstration against unacceptable policies or changes in the academic environment. Such is the fate of the Enugu State University of Science And Technology (ESUT). The institution has been shut down again just after it re-opened on January 17, 2011, to pick up from the debris of what they lost in five months. ESUT, including other affected universities, had had to battle to soften the sledgehammer waged against it by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), which had banned admission of new students into the striking universities for the 2011 academic year. It took the intervention of stakeholders, and the minister of education, to release the ban, giving the institutions a time frame within which to meet up with the lost periods before they could think of admitting fresh students. However, this time around, the school was shut down because students have cried out against the hike in school fees by the authorities. The burden has become unbearable, given the economic situation of parents and care givers.

A third year student of Economics in ESUT, Dorothy Nkiru has not stopped asking questions if her generation is cursed or condemned to go through hell in a quest to acquire education. She has not stopped wondering why she must spend an extra year in school just because she happens to be a Nigerian. She spoke to LEADERSHIP Education baring her bitterness and frustration by the insensitive government. She said: "Can you imagine that we just resumed on the 17th of January this year? We just finished our exams on the 17th of March and resumed for the first semester on the 4th of April, only to be greeted by the unpleasant news of the outrageous hike in school fees. Fresh students now have to pay N120, 000, and that is excluding the N26,000 acceptance fee. For the second year students, their fees have been increased from N77, 250 to N102, 250. Others (3rd year to final year) now pay N68, 250, instead of N43,250. According to her, it was the peaceful demonstration by the first and second year students that forced the authorities to close down the universities. Some students of the institution have also described the closure of the school as politically motivated. Their argument is understandable, as the nation is currently deciding their leaders through the general polls. In previous elections, idle students become handy tools for political thuggery and perpetration of violence during elections.

Other helpless students also lamented the ordeal they faced during the last strike, and expressed fears that they may likely suffer the same fate if the state government does not intervene. Another student, Ebuka Uzendu said: "how can they just increase our school fess without warning? It is not proper because parents are the ones to bear this burden. Some parents have up to four wards in different schools and if you continue to increase their financial burden of providing education for their children, it might just be unbearable. The state government should understand this and alleviate the suffering of the masses", he pleaded.

The Public Relations Officer of the university, Mr. Ossy Ugwuoti tried to justify the action of the university management. When LEADERSHIP Education inquired to know whether the increment was part of the conditions for calling off the previous strike, Ugwuoti said it was the inability of the government to fund university education necessitated the increment.

According to him, the state government increased subventions to ESUTafter the strike and directed its management to hike its internallygenerated revenue to enable it meet the challenges facing the university.

Ugwuoti explained that the fees increased by the university management included developmental, exam fees, among others, saying that it was not students' school fees that were increased.

He stated that the management decided to increase the fees with a view to increasing its internally generated revenue.

On the implications of the increment, he explained that the management of the institution and the students discussed elaborately before agreeing to carry out the increment, insisting that there was no implication.

But, most of the students who spoke to LEADERSHIP Education on condition of anonymity, lamented that the management of the school increased their fees by over 300 per cent, saying it was difficult for them to agree that their representatives were part of the agreement. Perturbed by the increment, students of the university took to the streets before marching to National Television Authority (NTA), Enugu last week to protest the increment, a situation that forced the vice chancellor to order for its closure.

But the ESUT vice-chancellor, Ogbonna Cyprain Onyeji, has denied this, saying the school was closed down for the Easter break. For an institution which has lost a considerable part of the academic calendar, ESUT could not afford to go on break, yet again, for more than two weeks before Easter. The school was closed precisely on Thursday, April7, 2011, for Easter, which comes up on April 24, 2011.

President of ASUU Prof. Ukachukwu Awuzie, in a recent interview with LEADERSHIP Education, condemned in strong terms what he called exploitation of students by the government saying 'That is why the people of the S/East have the opportunity to determine their destiny, to speak out against some of these obnoxious policies. We as ASUU have never advocated any hike in school fees. The states have the responsibility to invest in human capital development. Every state does that. We are opposed to this astronomical imposition of high fees on students; they tend to take away the public schools from the people. Education is public good and should not be restricted to the children of the rich. And by the way, who are these rich people? Those who have cornered the resources of the S/East and are using it for their own selfish end? Some of them, before getting to that position, could not pay their children's schools fees, even when it was N30, 0000, but because now they are presiding over the state funds, they could easily hike fees to as high as N150, 000, or N250, 000, and expect the students to pay. What is the earning capacity, how many of the parents in the S/East are employed? The S/East has been very unfortunate with their leadership. We have people who are so myopic, who are so self-centred, and who don't understand the essence of education. Even though they have university degrees that does not mean they are educated. They don't understand the essence and developmental capacity of education. But if you transform the education sector, you should be able to produce better products for the local and international market. Ekiti State is the 35th in the table of allocation. It has three universities and is not charging high amounts of money, yet, it is developing. Imo State is 14th and does not know what is called development, yet they want to charge students high fees", Awuzie said.

Though the cost of providing education, stakeholders have agreed over time that this could not be the sole responsibility of the government, and school authorities have also been advised to be more innovative and creative in generating funds internally to support the running of the school. For instance, the minister of education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufai recently directed vice-chancellors to establish Information and Communication (IT), centres in their schools to help the institutions in generating money to offset some bills. There are other entrepreneurship ventures that could be of help to schools instead of indiscriminate increase of tuition fees, to the extent of stirring the students into demonstration and consequently, closure of school.

Leadership/14/04/2011