LAUTECH: Management justifies ‘no payment of fees, no examination’ policy

Our attention has been drawn to the appeal by the leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), on the need to reverse the ‘No School Fees, No Exam’ policy, of the Management of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso.

While sympathizing with the category of students who are likely to be affected by the inevitable move of Management, we make bold to say the step is justifiable going by the refusal of students to pay approved tuition that is now running into some billions of Naira unpaid debt.

It may interest the students’ body under its Chairman, Mr Olujuwon Asubiojo, that the handlers of the University have been so compassionate, a situation that has allowed the students owe accumulated bills in the first place. Members of the public may also want to know that a campaign indicating that all students must pay before they could be allowed to sit for tests and examinations have been mounted for clearly over a month before now, to allow whoever that was owing to rectify their financial status if they were sincerely committed to paying.

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The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Ologunde has been magnanimous enough to on behalf of Senate, ordered that the portal be kept open to allow those who are sincere in paying to do so, as the University is bent on recovering all outstanding debts while not allowing new ones.

While the Management is committed to putting a stop to the incessant industrial actions of staff unions, it therefore would be unfair if NANs would want to pretend not to know that the University is not insulated from the economic realities of the country which it alluded to as a justification for students not wanting to pay for the education which they receive.