The Vice-Chancellor of Nasarawa State University, Prof. Suleiman Bala Mohammed has denied reports that the institution increases school fees for the 2019/2020 academic session.
Professor Bala told Peoplereporters in keffi that he sympathise with students and their parents over the economic situation in the country, adding that if he has his way there would be a reduction of tuition, especially for the postgraduate students.
He explained that what the school did was to insist on best practice by insisting that all graduating students pay five thousand naira for transcript and those who live in the hostel to pay three thousand naira as maintenance fee.
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According to him, the payments are not for every student, adding that while five thousand is to be pay by final year students, three thousand is to be pay by students who want to stay in the hostel.
”I want to state categorically that there has been no increment in school fees, in fact when I received the news, I told them that is fake news and that is why after a while the agitation calm down.
“What we did was to maintain the structure of the fees for the last session but we introduce two things that are confusing students to think that we have increase school fees.
“The first one is a transcript, anybody who graduates and needs transcript usually come and apply, pay five thousand naira and get the transcript but the situation I met on ground, even the result are not well kept to the extent that a lot of people are missing their transcript and I have to work on that, we have tidy them up all issues of result including the current once. we then said we are going to do best practice, and that is, if your result is ready, you can download the transcript, we, therefore, said the five thousand that you pay when you want the transcript must be pay now so that we can improve our facilities and make sure that all the transcript are there so that you don’t need to come to us but download.
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“Once you made the payment, you can access the code and download when you need it and so we say all final year students should pay that five thousand. Then secondly, when you look around, you see some hostels, commissioned by the government, we fix the mattresses and things there, also we renovated all the hostels, we dug boreholes and because we don’t want to have problems with hostels maintenance, we say anybody that wants to live in the hostel will pay three thousand naira maintenance fee which would be operated separately by a committee comprises of students and students affairs division and we say once that is done, we would then hand up to our hands in hostels maintenance. And if there are problems, the students will identify them and approach the dean and such an issue will be solved.
“So the three thousand naira is only for the students who are staying in the campus and the five thousand is for the final year students but other aspects of the school fees, nothing has changed. I assure you that I am very sympathetic to the students and their parents, I am much concern about the fees if I have my way I will bring down the fees particularly the postgraduates class”.
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Professor Suleiman also urged the Federal Government and the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to resolve the disagreement over the implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) in the interest of the nation.
According to him, both ASUU and Federal Government mean well for the country, adding that dialogue and negotiation should be embraced by all to avoid shutting down the university system.
”My advice is that the FG should look into the issue; they should commence negotiation with ASUU so that amicable resolution is found. Because you will agree that the trend over time is that there would be threat of a strike, the action will take place, and the universities will be shut down at the end of the day it is only through dialogue and discussion that you resolve the issues and open up the universities. So what I’m appealing to government to do is to ensure that they get the leadership of ASUU to the discussion and ensure that we don’t get into the place of a strike. I am sure the issue is not the one that can’t be resolve because the leadership of the union met with Mr. President and I believe that there should be room for dialogue and negotiation and there should be room for an amicable resolution of the matter, which is my hope”.
He said while the federal government is concern about ending corruption and ensuring transparency in the system, the union is also in agreement but wants their peculiarity which the system did not capture be address.
Prof Mohammed explained that for instance, “ there are jobs that we do that are not captured on the public service scheme, for example, sabbatical leave, Adjoin appointment whether as visiting lecturer or as temporary staff and the IPPIS does not capture all these “.
The university don further expressed confidence that despite a recent circular that those yet to be capture on the system would not pay, the matter would be resolved amicably between government and the lecturers.
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