“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question” – Eugene Jonesco.

Looking at the University management’s standpoint for an increase in school fees, the lonely rationale has been a case for ‘national economic realities’, and nothing more. UI as an institution is quite unlike the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, Andrew Adejo, who disclosed in August 2023, before an ad hoc committee of the House of Representatives that inflating fees across the country were unconnected ‘with the Students’ loan’. UI in contrast spelt its honest case. No one needs to be told that both ‘the student loan’ and ‘UI’s national economic realities’ are interchangeably substitutes. They sway attention to two seemingly non-identical but same direction.

On a yearly basis, students of the University of Ibadan are required to pay sessional fees which are into certain categories. Commonly for all, students pay a bundled fee, which is a compound for certain services. These discretionary charges, need to be known as a fashion, are different from “tuition”, which all Federal Universities are believed to be free from. By tuition, it means students do not pay for the ‘teaching and learning’ experience.

Tuition-free policy in federal universities was, for the sake of awareness, a result of a policy which was prompted by the oil boom, during the Third National Development Plan (1975 – 1980). Today, almost as a yearly sloganeering, there have been call for the introduction of tuition by its campaigners. The view that Universities needs fund to run, obviously a hardly exhausted conversation, has led to new or fashionable discretionary charges by Universities across the country.

Our Payment Versus What We Get

No person or business, enjoys paying more than they should, but in keeping the costs down. It is only common accounting to check where and how money is expended. Payers as in the Nigerian case, who are either parents or students fending for themselves should get a full value of their money or should get a cut down on some frivolous expenses that they can no longer afford to bear.

The University requires students to pay three fees: bundled fee, utility fee and technology levy. As judicious buyers of education that students have been forced to become, it has become imperative to look questionably at the fees breakdown.

On Bundle Fee

As the only fee paid by students that has an actual breakdown, it is only natural that it would be subjected to the highest amount of scrutiny. Couched within the ‘bundle fee’ are several payments stemming from whose mere appellation demands explanation.

First on the list is the department major and minor, the first fees listed, which one could reasonably assume was meant to cover registration in a student actual and apparent departments. And of course, faculty registration, for registration in the faculty. Why exactly is there an additional ‘registration’ for two thousand five hundred naira (2,500) right under medical? What exactly are students registering for again? What other registration needs to be done that cannot be clearly stated except under the dubious banner of a deceptively simple ‘registration’? When students are charged ‘Dept Major’s and ‘Dept Minor’ does it mean they are paying for taking courses in those departments? In what way is this different from ‘tuition’?

Next, we look at the third item on the bundle fee breakdown, ‘Developmental levy’ priced #5,000. Guessing, this levy should mean that students pay ‘for funding construction and infrastructural projects’ in the University. Since the academic session when the University had began charging this levy as a payable fee, the question of how well the University has been able to develop has become a reasonable to ask? What in exact terms has the University as an institution developed? In situations where new buildings within the University wear tags with ‘TETFUND’ inscriptions, it becomes hardly believable that this fund is judiciously expended for such function. Does it not contrast with its scope when students pay to develop a University in a school, which by provision should be funded by taxpayers’ money?

Succeeding this is a ten thousand naira (10,000) examination fee in the current session fees breakdown. It seems strange that students would have to pay for an examination that they are meant to write. Learning will never be termed complete until there is a proof that what was taught has really been learned. In that way, examinations are only a natural conclusion of the learning process. So, students don’t pay for learning (in the form of tuition), why should they now pay to prove that they have learnt? And if they have to, why ten thousand naira?

Finally, we arrive at the GES Registration, according to which is said to worth eight thousand naira (8,000), about an eighty percentage (80%) of what was charged for examination. Before the historic July 16 and 17 protest, students, after paying this GES fee which was part of the bundled fee still forcibly have to buy GES materials for the course, which the school seems to make mandatory without which students are often delayed during examination dates.

It should be noted that faculty, department major and minor fees when added together do not equal GES registration. This is for a course that starts halfway through the semester and shift on students the responsibility to find a class venue for lecture. And with the exams being held virtually, there can be no claim that the fee is mainly for the writing of the exam. It is only rational that within the amount paid, provision would be made for the necessary textbooks if nothing else. Students should not expect anything more, this far, GES fee is to keep in line with the University’s seeming implicit policy of “always have them pay more for less”.

Patterned Payments 

On the other side of the bundle fee, are repeated payments that don’t get used. They appear reasonable on the surface, easier to explain, but unfortunately they are not. Looking at things like Insurance, Sports, Faculty Prospectus, ID card, they seem like perfectly reasonable things to be paying for in a University.

What exactly is the University insuring its students against? Who gets the benefit of the insurance, because it doesn’t seem like the school would replace a student’s lost item, or cover the cost of their stay in hospital (since they still pay a fee for medical), and students can still get held liable for damage to hall property. So where does the insurance investment in the payable fees go? What has it ever translated into? What exactly are students paying for when they pay for sports? Is it for the permission to carry out sporting activities on the campus? Permission to use the schools sports facilities? It doesn’t seem like they provide equipment for students, and many of the sport facilities are in disrepair, so where exactly is the money going?

How many times should a student pay for faculty prospectus and ID card? This seems like the kind of fees that should be dropped after 100 level, but the school seems passionate to keep them around for no other reason but to extract funds from students.

Invisible Fees

Too much focus should not be paid on the bundle fee, lest tunnel vision be developed. Students also have two extra fees to pay, fees that can only be termed as invisible for lack of feeling of their effect.

Utilities are meant to ease the lives of those that use them. But if students pay for utilities, which include water and light, it would be seem like a duplication of the accommodation fee, which one would assume would also include these utilities, because if one gets a place off-campus, one can be assured of those utilities. Recall that no official, definite, unclear or clear explanation was offered by the University of Ibadan management for the fees in the 2022/2023 academic session when it was introduced.

It may be argued that utility fee is within the learning areas. It has remained inadequate. Toilet facilities are not anything to write home about, with Faculty of Social Sciences and Arts are hardly functioning.

The technology fee does not fare any better, being missing in action of effect since its inception. Students are not even sure what exactly the fee was for, though the Samuel Samson Tobiloba administration passed on the information that it was supposed to be for wifi.

Addressing the Current Regime of Inexplicable Fees

Being critical of the whole fee issue from the lens of a year 1 student, the University of Ibadan has inflated its caution levy to as high as ten thousand naira (10,000); counselling to two thousand naira (2,000); development of the University to fifteen thousand naira (15,000); development of the faculty to ten thousand naira (10000); exam to a towering fifteen thousand naira (15,000); and faculty prospectus which students never get to five thousand naira (5,000).

There has been a headstrong increment of identity card fee to twelve thousand five hundred naira (12,500). This refers to a card which students get once in their first undergraduate year. That students are required to pay for same yearly can only be regarded underhanded. Students should demand for an explanation of what faculty registration, library, department major, department minor, GES registration, and medical fee means, in their separate coinage? The University of Ibadan student community must confront the inexplicable construct of bundled fees by demanding public accountability to its tune.

On SUG and Digital/Photo Studio 

It is an aberration that Students’ Union due was unilaterally increased from two hundred naira (#200) to one thousand naira (#1,000) without a consensus on such subject by students who are the owners of the Students’ Union.

Despite that it has being weeks that this particular concern has been raised to the notice of the Students’ Union leadership, it remains a dire concern for the Students’ community to raise. On no known ground should the Students’ Union due be increased, without students who are members of the Union agreeing to such as a resolve.

Also, in a department like History and where else such applies, questions should be flagged at what the construction of digital or photo studio is. What does a fifty thousand naira photo studio has to do with studying History?