Priscilla Ofunre, Ado-Ekiti
Vice Chancellor of the Federal University Oye Ekiti (FUOYE), Prof. Kayode Shoremekun, has decried the non-payment of school fees by students of the institution on a massive scale.
The Vice Chancellor said that of the over 17,000 students enrolled for the 2018/2019 academic session, about 15,000 students were yet to pay their school fees at the last check the management made.
He said that such unwholesome development has discouraged the management’s desire to meet many of the needs and demands of the school for more effective and enhanced academic and administrative activities.
The vice chancellor spoke to newsmen, at the weekend, in Ado-Ekiti, during an interactive session at the school premises.
According to him, “It is very appalling that students these days have been failing to pay school fees for reasons we cannot fathom.
“By the last check, about 15,000 of our students, have not paid. This is over 90 percent of the students’ population because we have over 17,000 students in the university”.
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“What we have found out with this is that even though the demand for education in our country is high, an effective demand which caters for prompt payment of school fees as well as being able to pay for quality education is lacking in this country,” he said.
Speaking further, the vice chancellor hinted that the school management have found out that many of the students fail to pay their school fees because they spend the ones given to them by their parents or guardians.
He, therefore, said that the management was devising a means by which parents can pay the fees directly without having to give their children or wards who have the tendency to divert such monies for other unproductive uses.
Commenting on the new efforts of his administration to provide some basic facilities to aide learning and support the expanding students’ population, which has resulted in the completion of several projects abandoned by his predecessor, Prof. Shoremekun also explained that while such projects as a new Faculty of Law complex, Faculty of Arts, Agriculture, as well as hostels, road networks and sports complex among others have been put in place by his administration, a lot more would have been done if students have paid their school fees as at when due.
“Our school fees is only N40,000 on each session. I believe an average Nigerian parent should be able to afford this, but we keep witnessing a situation where students don’t pay their school fees.
“There are indeed genuine cases as reasons for this ugly development, but they are very few, in the ration of five percent while we have cases where students spend their fees on over unproductive things as being majorly responsible for this.
“We will soon devise a means by which parents would pay directly into the school’s account, “he said.
