University Of Benin Students Vow To Resist New Fees Introduced During Vacation

The University of Benin (UNIBEN) unveiled

an increase in students’ fees, timing the

announcement to a period when the

students are on holiday in order to avert

likely protests and resistance.

The current increase in fees marks the second

time in consecutive academic seasons that

UNIBEN would demand higher fees as part of the

National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). A

student union leader at the university told

SaharaReporters that the management had

resorted to hiking NHIS fees because it had

exhausted excuses for increasing fees under

such names as teaching fees, examination fees

and hostel fees. “All these fees are ways of

adding undue financial burden on students and

their parents,” the source told

SaharaReporters.

Students had stoutly resisted the university’s

previous hike in fees, which proposed to raise

fees from N9,800 and N7,800 fees to N24,000

and N22,000 respectively. In the end, the

management and the students reached a

compromise of N14,000 and N12,000 respectively.

Two student union leaders told SaharaReporters

that the university had also used the NHIS to

justify the last increase. Under the fee hike,

each student would pay an additional N400 for

the NHIS.

“Why are they using it again to ask students to

pay more?” one student asked, promising that

the student body would resist the latest

increase when classes resume.

During the previous increase, UNIBEN’s Vice

Chancellor, Osauiki Oshondi, pleaded with the

students to accept the increase in NHIS fees in

order to help the institution to bridge a revenue

shortfall that arose from the cancellation of the

university’s revenue-earning part-time

programs.

“The N400 per student is a rip-off that will be

resisted upon our students’ resumption,” said a

student leader, adding, “N400 each from 40,000

students is a lot of money.”

Another student stated that the UNIBEN

administration claimed that the new increase

was a directive from the NHIS to all federal

academic institutions. “But we doubt it. That’s

why they announced the increase during our

vacation period,” he said, vowing student

resistance.