The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says about 40 to 50 per cent of students will leave school in the next two to three years if the federal government fails to stop what the union described as an arbitrary increment in the universities’ tuition fees.

Among the universities that recently increased their tuition fees were the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in Ile-Ife, Osun State.

Speaking in an interview with Channels TV on Sunday night, the ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, said the universities arbitrarily increased their fees.

Osodeke, however, called on the government to stop the increment, saying: “Today, universities are arbitrarily increasing school fees. Is that correct in an environment today where the minimum wage is N30,000 per month when you have to pay rent, pay heavily for transportation and you are enforcing it on the students?

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“If nothing is done about these heavy fees being introduced by schools all over the country, in the next two or three years, more than 40 to 50 per cent of these children who are in school today will drop out.”

The ASUU President, who enjoined the federal government to increase budgetary allocation to education, warned that the country would be ungovernable when Nigerian youths are out of school.

He added: “When they drop out, they will become a big feed for recruitment for those who want this country to be ungovernable.

“This is what we are saying, create the environment we have in the 60s and 70s. When I was a student, the government was paying me for being a student. Let’s have an environment where the children of the poor can have access to education.

“School fees of N300,000, how can the children of someone who earns N50,000 a month be able to pay such a fee?”

The Star