The Youth Rights Campaign (YRC) has condemned the recent hike in feeding fees at Lagos Model Colleges from N35,000 to N100,000.
Parents of students attending the model colleges had threatened that their children would boycott the schools over the recent hike in boarding fees.
The parents, therefore, demanded the reversal of the hike in boarding fees
According to the parents’ forum, their wards will not resume for the new academic session until the hike in boarding fees is reversed.
In a statement issued on Saturday night, the Chairman of the Parents’ Forum of Lagos Model Colleges, Surv. Dapo Dawodu, lamented the “greed” behind the increment.
He said, “We have witnessed, in the last 24 hours, an avalanche of outpouring of extreme disdain, anguish and deep frustration at the mindless and provocative 200% increment of boarding fees for our children, by the mindlessly corrupt officers of the Lagos State Ministry of Education!
“And it was most unfortunate that the unbridled greed of these enemies of the good people of Lagos State (vide you the parents), were given their leeway by the headship of the ministry.
“To be clear, the fee of N100,000 per term, when paid in a school of 1000 students, translates to N100million in the purse of the school principal to feed the children within just 3 months!”
In a press statement issued by Francis Nwapa, National Secretary YRC, the group accused Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of being ‘insensitive’ and ‘shameless’ towards the current economic realities facing Nigerians.
The statement reads: “The Nigeria capitalist ruling elites push the consequences of the crises they created on the poor. The Lagos State Government under Babajide Sanwo-Olu is so shameless that they have continued to sink public education further below where Tinubu sank it while as governor of Lagos State.
“Tinubu has continued his collapse of public education at the federal level but fully commercializing education through his student loan policy.
“Nigerian children deserve free qualitative education at all levels and do not deny them access to education. All well-meaning Nigerians must lend their voices to this attempt to exclusively position education for the rich alone while the children of the poor who form over 90% of Nigeria’s population are denied access to education.
“We reject education commercialization. Education is a Right not a privilege.”
Parents of boarding students at Eva Adelaja Girls Grammar School in Bariga, Lagos State, on Sunday, protested against the fee hike.
The school is one of the model colleges in the state.
The parents stormed the school area, chanting slogans and demanding the immediate reversal of the fee hike.
