‘Help Pay Our School Fees Before We Are Thrown Out’ – Kano Varsity Students In FUD Plead With State Gov’t

The National Association Of Kano State Students (NAKSS) schooling at the Federal University Dutse (FUD) in Jigawa state, are calling on the Kano state government to come to their aid over the outrageous hike in school fees at the university.

Speaking in a chat with THE WHISTLER, Ibrahim Yunusa, spokesman to the president of the union, complained that the increment in the school fee has rendered many students helpless as they are unable to afford it.

According to Yunusa, earlier this year, the management of the school increased school fees from the usual N30k and N40k they used to pay to about N100k or more.

As a result of this, on Sunday, NAKSS staged a peaceful protest holding placards to draw the attention of the Kano state government to their current situation, as many of them stand the chance of being thrown out of school looking at the deadline for the closure of registration approaching in about six days away.

The spokesman said: “So we’ve been on the issue trying to see how students can afford to pay such fees, then election time came and we got new leadership in Kano. The governor of Kano paid registration fees for Kano students schooling at Bayero University Kano (BUK).

“They are more than 7000 he paid the registration for, and it’s about N700m. While we the students of FUD whose school fees were first increased were neglected. So we’ve been calling the attention of the Kano state government to come to our aid and pay these school fees for us.”

According to him, although FUD has made the form of fee payment flexible for students so that they can pay instalmentally by paying N60k in the first semester, while paying the remaining N40k in the second semester yet some of them are still unable to afford it.

“As I’m talking to you now, this is the 10th week that we resumed from holidays for the second semester, more than 40 percent of the students have not paid this remaining 40 percent fees. These students are faced with the challenge of being kicked out of school if they fail to pay the remaining balance.

“We wrote a lot of letters to Kano state government to sympathise and pay these fees, and we were lucky the governor replied and directed us to go to the office of the Commissioner for Higher Education. We went to the Commissioner and attached the reply from the governor, but up till now nothing has happened.

“So in the next 6 days the school will close down the registration portal and this means students that didn’t pay have automatically dismissed themselves from the school.

“This is why we gathered members of the NAKSS FUD chapter and sat for a meeting to discuss the issue, then we decided to raise these placards to send a message to the Kano state government on the situation we are in,” Yunusa told THE WHISTLER.