In order to provide Nigerians with access to high-quality education, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has reiterated its demand that school tuition be reduced.
The students vowed to ensure that any such increases are repealed and denounced the recent fee hikes implemented by certain post-secondary educational institutions.
This was said by Comrade Lucky Emonefe, the newly elected president of NANS, during a news conference in Abuja.
During the conference, Lucky Emonefe, the duly elected president of the association, was reaffirmed by the council of zonal coordinators of NANS nationwide and four presidential candidates from the organization’s recently finished national convention.
Emonefe remarked that institutions shouldn’t be allowed to raise their fees and charges dramatically at a time when Nigerians are suffering because of the harsh economic conditions brought on by the elimination of gasoline subsidies.
He cautioned that students would no longer put up with such arbitrary decisions being made about the management of the nation’s educational institutions, even as he supported the University of Calabar students’ recent protest against the institution’s tuition fee increase of 100%. He emphasized that the most recent event went against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s earlier order for all public universities to stop raising tuition in any way.
He did, however, insist that vice-chancellors and the institution’s management follow President Tinubu’s order, which asks public universities to stop raising tuition or face penalties.
He assured Nigerian students that the association would form a committee to monitor institutions that are raising fees in order to force them to follow the president’s order, and he warned that the student body would not hesitate to ground academic activities in any institution found to have started on an arbitrary school fees hike.
Prior to this, Emonefe was recognized as the legitimate president of NANS by the four presidential contenders in the just finished NANS national convention. These candidates were Edom Smart John, Stephen Edidiong Tobi, Boniface Emesowun, and Enomfon Umoisien from the University of Uyo.
“We make bold to say this because there is no shame in losing a contest. It does not mean that the rest of us were less qualified or incapable of leading the organisation, No.
“It is just about the delegates’ choices at this time. So, we take our individual losses in good faith to join hands with the winner and build a strong, focused, and undivided NANS. In doing so, we win with our comrade brother, Lucky Emonefe, the undisputed president of NANS.
“Of course, we read from a section of the media that one of us, Comrade Pedro Chibuzor Obi, is claiming the Presidency of NANS. While we carefully refuse to join issues with him as a person, it is, however, ridiculous and indicative of deliberate media mischief that somebody will sit in a hotel, call the media, and declare himself the president of a big organisation like NANS, and the media put that out as news to the public.”
