Students of the University of Abuja have on Monday staged a peaceful protest at the entrance of the school against hike in tuition fee and other issues.
Students of University of Abuja Monday protested over what they described as ‘injustice’ to them by the university’s authority.
The students barricaded the entrance to the university’s permanent, saying that their demands like – opening of school Portal, review of school fees and allowing students pay their fees without having to write to the registrar – must be met.
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Comrade Isah Adamu, a student with the faculty of Art Education who spoke to our correspondent said they were protesting because of the injustice by the current Vice Chancellor (VC).
Adamu said since the VC took over, he has made life unbearable for the students.
“Before he came, my fee was between N21,000 and N22,000, but he has increased it to N42,000; the acceptance fee for new students was N4,500, he increased it to N20,000. This forced a lot of new students to defy their admission. The acceptance fee and the school fee became higher that they could not afford.
“Also, our course registration, which usually was N150 has been increased to N5,150. This they said was because of late registration when the school is just resuming today and the portal has been shut down because of some peculiar problems.
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“We tried to protest before but were disrupted by some DSS and army personnel. On resumption for academic programmes now, the VC directed that all school fees are paid within two weeks and defaulters will have a year added to their academic years. He has ignore the impact of CoViD-19 on economic and livelihood of Nigerians. The VC is adding to our burden without a human face,” Isah said.
Some of the demands seen in flyers shared along with pictures from the protest include “reopening and extension of school fees portal till the end of the session, no late registration fee including Add and Drop, review and reduction of school fees ahead of next session, and postponement of first semester examination to 8th of March 2021.”
Efforts to get the management to respond proved abortive as at time of filing the report.
© ControlTV 2021.
