Sometimes last month, the Vice Chancellor of Lagos State University said tuition fee should be up to a million Naira per session. NANS pounced on her. Released statement upon statements to condemn her opinion. She expressed “just an opinion” based on her knowledge of the abysmal underfunding of the education system under the regime of APC at the federal and state level. But NANS almost waged world war 3 on that professor.
Ahmadu Bello University ,Zaria just increased tuition fee to something ridiculously high. However, it is neither so ridiculously high nor unusual when you compare it with what has been going on across our campuses with tuition fee hikes. Several campuses are paying more than a million Naira per session. But you wonder why NANS has been irredeemably quiet on those ones but suddenly starts threatening ABU Vice Chancellor. You will get it soon.
The most embarrassing of it all is the attacks on Prof Abdelghaffar Amoka Abdelmalik over his ideological and principled take on the matter. Anyone familiar with ASUU struggle on proper funding of education must have known that Prof Amoka is one of the loudest voice of reasoning in those struggles with his several articles educating the public on the essence of the struggle against education defunding and student loan. NANS in its usual ways would not support ASUU but maintain ‘neutrality’ because they do not want to fight their leaders in government. A neutrality that defines their loyalty to the government, in fact.
Sometimes in 2017/18, under the leadership of Prof Abiodun Ogunyemi as President of ASUU, we in the Alliance of Nigerian Students Against Neoliberal Attacks (ANSA) waged a collective struggle against Muhammadu Buhari regime’s attempt to defund education and introduce student loan. At the center of that struggle was Dr Wale Babalakin who was the head of the government’s negotiating committee. The committee had, on behalf of the regime, recommended that to end ASUU strike and revitalise universities, tuition fees should be raised to #350,000-500,000 for Humanity and Social science students and #550,000-1,000,000 for natural and medical science students. ASUU and those of us in ANSA as students alternative group to NANS fought against this intellectually and physically with sacrifices paid. I remembered we held our first 3 days summit in September 2017 at the CDHR headquarters in Lagos with the support of Barr Malachy as the President, Late Cdr Comrade-abiodun Aremu and @prof ‘Dele Ashiru (ASUU UNILAG Chairperson) as speakers.
In fact, we were arrested, detained, imprisoned at different times from different campuses across the country. I was arrested and assaulted alongside Adeyeye Olorunfemi, Oyefade Oluwaseun Opeyemi and a few others on the campus of UI by the University security agents. We were assaulted by the police on the street of Abeokuta. We were harassed inside Sabo market in Ikorodu Lagos along with Obafemi Sodunola Trotsky @Abiodun Sanusi and others during as we were going from one public market to the other to sensitise the public on the danger of this initiated policy. I was present at ALL of these movements. We paid sacrifices, including threats of dismissal from the university. Some of us were dismissed from the university but reinstated over these struggle.
Gbenga Oloniniran wrote a recent opinion article on this struggle, you can check his timeline for this. He was sent to prison in one of these struggles as OAU management justified the hostel crisis with government underfunding. The statement of ASUU is on record over this. A simple search on the page of Premium Times and Sahara Reporters will bring up many of the statements by Prof Abiodun Ogunyemi on this struggle. We held several meetings with management of different universities and government representatives, none of them could defeat us intellectually on why or how free education is possible given the resources and potential of our country. It was in the midst of this struggle that NANS national executive met with Late General Buhari to promise him millions of vote because he is a good father. The video is everywhere on the internet. We challenged this and indeed, we won. Fee hike idea was revoked, ASUU and COEASU strikes were suspended.
In 2020, at the height of the 8 months ASUU strike, NANS became a shadow of the history we were told of it. It was hustling for something else. Again, the government brought up the idea of a million naira tuition fee per session and student loan. I was the outgoing president of Tai Solarin University of Education, Students‘ Union at the time. We saw that NANS would not be helpful. I was mandated at an emergency meeting of the union executives and parliament leaders to start mobilising all student union presidents across the country to organise independently of NANS to solidarise with ASUU. The first point of contact was Awóyẹmí Michael (OOU SU President) and Michael Proverbial (FUNAABSU President). We quickly reached the President of UI, UNILORIN, FUTA, FUTMINNA, LAUTECH and others.
We conveyed a conference at the University of Ibadan students’ union building. The ASUU leaders on the campus, Prof Ademola Aremu and OAU ASUU Chairperson, Prof Egbedokun were present. From this conference, we marched in a protest to the federal secretariat in Ibadan. That is how the national protest started. Independent of NANS involvement. The argument of the government at the time is that student would fund the fees with loan that will be repayable over the period of 35 years when they start working. We logically defeated them. Government reneged on the initiative, stopped their blackmail against ASUU (at least for a moment) and reached a better agreement with loan and fee hike off the equation. Prof Amoka was one of the most prominent writers analysing the danger of the loan and what it means for the public education.
At the beginning of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu regime in 2023, the drums of student loan was reinvented. ASUU started warning parents and students about the danger of this. There are multiple articles written by myself and Sanyaolu Juwon on Punch, Sahara Reporters and Socialist Workers bulletin on this subject. We warned of the dangers and implications. Last year, through a Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Nigeria funded podcast project, we had Prof Adelaja Odukoya who was at a time ASUU Lagos Cordinator as a guest on the podcast to educate the masses on this. The bane of this society is that those who are in charge of NANS and several supposed students bodies do not read and watch anything intellectually and scientifically engaging.
I know that the NANS folks who are now attacking Prof Amoka would not have the intellectual patience to read to this paragraph at all. But let us remind them that we warned them off celebrating student loan. A government would not introduce student loan if it plans to make tuition fee affordable. It is because the government want to cut off funds for education that they are introducing student loan. The logic is that students would take loans to pay tuition fees which will then serve as IGR for the university to sustain itself. This idea started with state owned universities (not with loan but at least with higher fees than federal varsities).
It is ironic that the same NANS that applaud an irresponsible government for offering loans to students suddenly finds their voices in attacking the management of ABU for increasing fees. In the backyard of the national leadership of NANS in UNILESHA, UNIOSUN, LAUTECH and several others in the South West up to the North are hike in fees. But I think the problem is that the ex Vice Chancellor of LASU and the VC of ABU are not good supporters of NANS frolicking before now. This is why they can attack them. What Prof Amoka has written, for any intelligent person, is not a defense of fee hike in ABU but an explanation of how student loan, underfunding of university cannot be separated from fee hike.
Indeed, if NANS is serious about fighting fee hike. They should first do the impossible work of fighting against their sponsors – the APC regime. No management would have the boldness to increase fees when government has provided them all the funds they need to manage the institution. This is a basic logic NANS people should understand already. You cannot increase the price of education for the consumer unless the manufacturing government has instructed the managers of the factories to increase price for self sustenance (use of words deliberate since education is now treated like consumer goods by the APC regime). The attempt by NANS to pick on Prof Amoka or management of any institution over fee hike is escapism and an act of cowardice or even betrayal. Go and fight the regime that makes education funding a private business!
This is not to acquit the management of ABU. A noble management with noble professors in charge would honourably resign from position that will make them be spokespersons or enforcement agents of the destruction of public education. Maybe I am not writing in the hope that NANS people will read and act with conscience or principle. If anything, I expect them to attack me for this. But I write for posterity and in defence of public education. The news from my backyard in France is that high school and university students are protesting heavily for improvements in education funding and recruitment of more education workers. NANS should emulate this and learn that a regime that removed education subsidy and replaced it with loan does not deserve their friendship. The time to summon courage and fight this regime is now!
Soneye Lekan Las
06/10/2026
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