Tuition Anger

Professor Bartholomew Okolo

Nigeria's first indigeneous ivory tower, the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), is shut down indefinitely following a violent students' protest over astronomical increase in tuition fees
By Anene Ugoani, Enugu
Armed policemen are now guarding the two campuses of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), in Enugu State. The Senate of the university gave orders for the indefinite closure of the institution, following two days of violent students protests over about 300 percent hike in tuition fees. The angry students demonstrated within and outside the campuses, first on Saturday, January 16 and Monday, January 18, 2010.
In the heat of the demonstrations on Saturday at Nsukka, principal officers of the university, took to their heels. The students vandalised the residence of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Bartholomew Okolo, who came into office only seven months ago. Chanting “Okolo Must Go” slogans, the students also badly damaged the Pro-Chancellor Lodge, 22 cars and buses parked in the Vice-Chancellor’s and Pro-chancellor’s Lodges, as well as vandalised the university’s Senior Staff Club, to register their anger against the professors who they alleged did not oppose the astronomical increases.
Before the protests erupted on Saturday, the students had prepared a mock coffin of the Vice-Chancellor and printed several copies of his obituary posters, which they pasted on the walls of buildings throughout the university. When they returned to the university campus on Saturday, after marching to the Enugu – Benue Expressway, a distance of about five kilometers away, they buried the mock coffin at a solemn “funeral”.
At the Enugu – Benue Expressway, the students held up vehicular and human traffic for close to three hours before mobile policemen from Enugu, led by Ehindero Ola, dislodged them. The Ogige Main Market in Nsukka was closed by the traders as a mark of solidarity with the students. And motorists had green leaves on their vehicles to identify with the students.
Some casual workers of the university, who were recently sacked by the embattled Vice-Chancellor, cheered the protesting students from the roadsides. The Source was told that the immediate-past vice-chancellor, Professor Chinedu Nebo, had employed several natives of Nsukka who donated their land for the building of the university in 1960, as casual workers and placed them on a salary of N5,000 monthly to alleviate their poverty.
But shortly after Professor Okolo assumed office in June  last year, he fired the casual workers on the grounds that they were redundant and received meagre salaries that could expose them to the temptation of stealing expensive equipment at the university. The casual workers were said to have pleaded with him to show mercy as they were not complaining over the N5,000 stipend they were being paid, but the man reportedly turned a deaf ear to their entreaties.
According to a female 300 level Economics student, leaders of the Students’ Union Government (SUG) at the Nsukka campus had met with the Vice-Chancellor on January 12 and pleaded with him not to increase tuition fees, but that the man said what they had come to see him about, was an “issue of no concern to him”. Leaders of the SUG from the Enugu Campus, she recounted, met the VC again, alongside their colleagues at the Nsukka campus, and the man also refused to listen to their pleas.
Trouble started brewing on the two campuses of the university on Friday, January 15, she said, when the management of the university posted the notice of the hike in school fees and other charges on the institution’s website. Even before that Friday, she went on, the payment of the new fees had begun. Her words: “Fresh students were asked to pay N25,000 acceptance fee, instead of the N6,000 we paid when we were admitted. Continuing students, like me, who have earlier paid N30,000 school fees for the current session, are now required to pay an additional N50,000 to bring the total fees to N80,000.
“And the university has increased hostel charges from nine thousand naira to N35,000. Incoming students, are most hit. They bought shopping or advert forms at a cost of N10,000 each. Those admitted paid acceptance fee of N25,000 that is up from the N6,000 we paid when we came in. And they are expected to pay N120,000 as school fees,” the Economics Student told The Source.
The Source learnt that graduating students had been told before Friday, January 15, that they would pay N40,000 instead of N4,000 paid as convocation fee when Nebo was the Vice-Chancellor. And the institution’s management has already imposed a levy of N60,000 on every student in the university’s secondary school, without any explanation.