The House of Representatives expressed concern on Wednesday about the large sums of money charged as admission fees by students in the country’s tertiary institutions.

According to the House, the construction is quickly becoming an impediment to a smooth university admissions method. To that end, the House urged the Federal Government to increase funding for public universities in order to temper Nigeria’s unsustainable push for Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) at the cost of public education access.

The Committee on Tertiary Institutions and Services was also tasked by parliament to look into the high acceptance fees paid by the institutions. The resolution came after Julius O. Ihonvbere of Edo State proposed a motion at plenary titled “Need to Investigate the Acceptance Fees Charged by Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria.” Ihonvbere said he moved the motion earlier.

“the arbitrary high acceptance fees charged by some public universities on new students across the country has become a matter of great concern to many families”.

He further said that “amid the rising frustrations over the exorbitant fees, indigent families of new students that are forced to pay the acceptance fees are bemoaning the unusual astronomical increases against the backdrop of the fact that federal universities are supposedly tuition-free.

“The acceptance fees are discriminatory, as they vary from one University to the other which clearly shows that they have become mere internal revenue-generating mechanisms thus constituting an impediment to the smooth process of entry into Universities”.

The lawmaker went on to say that while some of the institutions charge nominal fees, others charge astronomically, and others charge nothing, and most institutions do not charge an acceptance fee in addition to tuition fees, raising the question of whether the institutions were all established under the same statute.

“If the situation is unchecked, acceptance fees may surreptitiously become the school fee, thus affecting the number of students that may gain entry into higher institutions in Nigeria. “The dire consequences of exorbitant acceptance fees in our Public Universities have led to many indigent students losing their admission as a result of their inability to afford the fees,” he said.

Adopting the motion, the House gave the committee four weeks to conclude the assignment and report back to it for further legislative action.

Extract from Vanguard News