ERC Drags UI Management, Demands Reversal of Late Registration Penalty

By Tijani Abdulkabeer
The Education Right Campaign, University of Ibadan branch has on Monday condemned UI management’s decision to penalize students for late registration.
The group through their Press Statement dated February 14, 2022 and titled “UI: ERC FAULTS THE ADMINISTRATION DECISION ON PENALTY FOR LATE REGISTRATION,” condemns this decision. They demand immediate reversal of the decision and further noted that it “will lead to an increase in the economic woe the mass of the students in the university are going through at the present time.”
The statement reads in part, “As far as we are concerned in ERC, the inability of students to pay the prescribed school fees within the stipulated time frame is firstly a reflection of the huge difficulty students have to go through in order to pay the outrageous school fee often imposed on them by the university administration .”
“Given this background and the prevailing economic hardship across the country, it is very obvious that no amount of penalty can guarantee prompt payment of school fees. Instead, the imposition of the so-called penalty will only end up compounding the economic woe of students and their suffering parents.”
“It is in the light of this we hold that, the only way to guarantee a prompt payment of school fee without any delay is never through an imposition of penalty for late registration but for the university administration to reduce the current outrageous schools fee to a level that will be affordable and payable without any delay to mass of the students especially those of the working class background.”
“This is quite possible and achievable only if some of the questionable fees like technology fee, development fee among others that are part of the current school fee regime are canceled . Unfortunately, this will never happen except there is a coordinated resistance of students led by the Students’ Union. This is why we call on the Mascot-led SU to commence an immediate process of mobilizing the mass of students in a coordinated resistance with a view to force the university administration to reverse its decision on penalty for late registration.”
Reacting to this development, the Students’ Union President, Adeyinka Mascot maintained that “most of these people (ERC Group) just want to push hard,” adding that at a later date, Students Union Presidents across the country would be meeting to discuss this issue.