UNIJOS has crashed school fees, says VC

• Electricity returns after three months blackout

Reprieve may have come for protesting students of the University of Jos as its Vice Chancellor, Prof. Tanko Ishaya, on Saturday, announced that the institution has crashed its fees.

According to him, the decision to reduce the fees followed a series of negotiations between UNIJOS authorities, students and other stakeholders.

He also stated that electricity had returned to the institution since last week, about three months after being thrown into darkness by the Jos Electricity Distribution Company.

The Vice-Chancellor stated these in a telephone interview with The PUNCH a few days after the students blocked roads leading to the campus in protest, following an increase in school fees and other services rendered by the institution.

The student protesters in a recorded video were mobilised by leaders of the university’sStudents Union Government.

While calling for an urgent reversal of the hike in school fees and other services rendered by the institution, the students said Nigerians were already going through a lot of hardship, hence the need for the authorities not to complicate the already bad situation with further fee increments.

He said, “UNIJOS fees have been crashed from whatever that had been published before. In fact, students of non-science courses will now be paying N105,000. The science students will be paying N135,000 and N140,000 for laboratories; so we have crashed significantly our charges.

“So, in all, returning students will be paying N140,000. In fact, some are now to pay N135,000 in total, that is those that are laboratory-based. Those that are not laboratory-based are paying less.

“It is important that the information gets out there because of some negative media reportage.

“The reason why we didn’t even struggle to make sure that the light was back was because the students were not around. So we now planned that by the time students are back, we need to make sure that light has been restored and light has been restored since last week.”