
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.