The students of the Olabisi Onabanjo University OOU is about to be hit by the school management over school fees payment. 

The statement issued by Dr Ogunsaya, the Chairman of the Teaching Practice, states that students in year 3 and year 4 eligible for teaching practice will be denied permission to participate in the 6-week exercise if they fail to show evidence of the school fees receipt. 

The students are to pay between N80,000 to N90,000 as school fees per session in a school where the majority of the students are from the background of an ordinary working-class family undergoing the economic hardship of the state and federal government implementing neo-liberal policies of capitalism.
We in the Movement for a Socialist Alternative MSA (OOU) frown at this policy. We urge the management of the University not to disrupt the education of the 300 and 400 level students are to partake in the forthcoming teaching practice exercise. 

We frown at this deadline school fee notice, which will put hundreds of students out of school, whose parents struggle day in and day out to send their wards to school and pay the obnoxious fees placed on their table as working-class parents.  
This is in addition to the high cost of living in a country where the government have refused to pay a mere N30,000 minimum wage. Yet, the OOU school management wants to add to the suffering of students in the university by introducing a draconian policy of, you don’t meet the deadline of payment, you won’t be allowed to seat for your exam. 

To pay a fee of N90,000 parents who earn a minimum wage will have to save its 3 months salaries to be able to pay the fee of only one child. Imagine how long it will take for working-class parents with more than a child in the faculty of education or other faculty like medicine, law etc to raise this huge fees.
Since the management has a proper checking procedure to ensure that no student indebted to the school could graduate, then teaching practice or IT should not be an avenue to disrupt student academic pursue. Apart from the exorbitant amount of fees been charged, students are still expected to pay the N5000 technology fee, departmental fee among others. 

At this time the standard of living is becoming unbearably high, where families are finding it difficult to eat two meals not to talk of three. MSA-OOU urge that the University authority should not worsen the problem of students with this astronomical and emergency payment of school fees.
We urge all students of the OOU to support the call for the suspension of this emergency school fees payment. The OOU students must also demand the right to seat for their exam without an unconditional policy of payments before the exam. 

Along with this, they should demand the right to participate in the Teaching Practice. The students in the faculty of education and other faculty should organise together to resist this policy. If not, they will be forced to pay this fee that is anti-students in a period the economic hardship is tripling. 

The right to go to school and have free quality education should be the fundamental right of the students and the working people. Along with this, OOU should use this opportunity to place fundamental demands on the regime to fund public education adequately without commercializing it. Added to this, if the resources of the country are utilised judiciously, free equality education is possible for every single Nigerian.

We use this medium to call on the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU), the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU), the Senior Staff Academic Union (SSANU), and working-class parents to demand the government provide free and quality public education as recommended by UNESCO for developing country to allocate 26% of it’s national budget to education.

We join the OOU students to demand the following: 

1. No to the deadline school fees payment and any hike of school fees.
2. Total cancellation of the N5000 Technology fee and all astronomical fees levied on students. 
3. The right to education must not be conditional. Public education is our democratic right.  
4. Judiciously fund public education with 26% budgetary allocation recommended by UNESCO. 
5. End all forms of harassment, victimization of students rights to challenge any policy of the university management. 

To build a campaign to resist this policy and other forms of resistance, kindly reach out to us via this number

08083319734, 08179846115.

Signed.Dagga TolarGeneral SecretaryMovement for A Socialist Alternative