Oshiomhole to review fees at state university

Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State has promised to review the school fees paid by part time students of the Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma. He also promised to hold a dialogue with full time students over their fees after getting the facts on how much the school earns and how much will be needed as subvention from the state government to take the school to an enviable height.

Mr Oshiomhole, said this when he visited the institution yesterday. He said he has agonised over what to do about the institution as several efforts to get information on how it is run in order to plan for the future has failed.

The governor’s presence in the institution was greeted by the students with calls for reduction in their school fees. He advised the students to nominate their representatives to air their grievances and, one after the other, they came to say their schools fees were on the high side. They said they were not consulted before the increase was made and many of them were finding difficult to pay the new fees.

Mr Oshiomhole said he visited the school to talk directly with the students to hear their concerns and share views as they have a right to know what is happening in their institution.

“The University was receiving a subvention of N150 million monthly, which was increased to an average of N205 million monthly since we came on board,” he said.

He said the management of the school was requesting for N310 million as monthly subvention, in addition to maintaining the current school fees. “Up till now they have not been able to tell me how many students are in the school, how much the school earns and what it is spent on,” he said.

He said he asked the management of the school about three times how much the school earns, and each time he was given a different figure. The subvention to the university shocked the students, who started leaving the hall in droves especially after the governor had addressed their concerns on the school fees.

The governor however noted that the problems of the school were beyond school fees, and promised to build two new hostels for the institution and provide the school with two 42-seater buses to ease the problem of transportation.

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