Medical Students Of Olabisi Onabanjo University And Their Cry For Justice!

Are students supposed to pay tuition fees to cover for period of strikes?Abeg help me read and correct me if my understaning is flawed.

''The management of Olabisi Onabanjo University is having a running battle with its final year medical students over attempts by the university management to extort the students. The university is “requesting” the students to pay 2 school fees in addition to the six school fees they already paid, with the threat that any student who does not pay will not be inducted into the medical profession.

The Olabisi Onabanjo University is a multi-campus university with the main campus in Ago-Iwoye. The medical students are in 2 neighbouring towns – Ikenne & Sagamu. The College of Agriculture is in Ayetoro while the School of Engineering is in Ibogun.

The current final year medical students who wrote their final exams in February 2014 have spent close to 10 years in school for a six year course because of diverse and numerous strikes, the latest being the 6-month ASUU strike that ended in December 2013. In Nigerian public universities, students enrolled for a 4-year programme often end up spending six or seven years because of strikes. 

So medical students tend to experience more strikes because they stay in school longer, though the case of Olabisi Onabanjo University is peculiarly worse because of countless internal strikes.

The drama started when on Wednesday January 15, 2014, five days before the start of the medical students’ final exams, the Dean of the Faculty of Clinical Sciences, Professor Fred Jaiyesimi, pasted a notice to the effect that students who did not have identity cards would not be allowed to write the exams.

 He asked students who did not have I.D. cards to go to the main campus of the university in Ago-Iwoye to get a clearance from the Registrar.



He later told students who produced their 600L ID cards that they still would not be allowed to write the exams, because their ID cards did not bear the 2012/2013 session. 

The students pointed out that there is no level above 600L and their 600L session falls under 2010/2011, not 2012/2013. Hence, since they have 600L I.D. cards, they were qualified to write the 600L exam. Moreover, the university itself released a “list of registered 600L medical students” and that list contains the names of all the students. 



The students eventually wrote the exams after staging a protest to the State Secretariat in Abeokuta where they were addressed by the Commissioner for Education, Barrister Segun Odubela, as well as the Chief of Staff and the SSG. 

 The students staged another protest to the Ogun state House of Assembly (OGHA) when the university authorities refused to release their results. The result was released on the same day of the protest.

However, the matter has now come to a head as the university has refused to take the necessary action to have the students inducted into the medical profession. 

 The Vice Chancellor, Prof Sabur Adesanya, claims that their prolonged stay in school is not due to strikes within the university alone (ASUU, SSANU, NASU etc) but also due to strikes at the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH) by Doctors, Nurses and other health workers.

But this only begs the question as the students have done what is expected of them by paying the number of tuition fees that correspond to the approved curriculum, the onus is on the university to provide them with the education for which they have already paid.



In an attempt to justify this blatant illegality, the Vice Chancellor has been twisting university regulations and quoting them in isolation. But these regulations existed when other Vice chancellors reigned and they didn’t twist it to demand extra tuition. The truth is that a session cannot be deemed to have ended if landmark exams or postings have not taken place. 

The university regulation is clear on that. The university regulation is also clear about the duration of each programme the university runs and the number of sessions each student is expected to register for.



In civilized climes, the Vice Chancellor would be apologizing to the students for keeping them in school without rendering the service for which they paid the university. He would be begging them not to sue for damages, but this is Nigeria, a country where impunity reigns. The Vice Chancellor has been boasting to whoever cares to listen that he has the backing of the state governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun. 

 Strikes are not new to universities in Nigeria, so this new VC, Prof Sabur Adesanya, is not the first VC under whom students would be graduating after spending extra time in school due to strikes. But he is the first one in all of Nigeria that wants students to pay extra tuition to cover for period of strikes.

The sad thing is that the university officials have been denying the fact that they are demanding extra tuition. The Head of Corporate Affairs of the University, Mr Niyi Oduwole, has been making serial press statements that are mostly illogical and often contradictory, all in attempt to deny the university is demanding additional tuition from its medical student to cover for periods of strikes. 

The simple question is, “why are these medical students being denied induction into the medical profession when they have written and passed their final exams and have fulfilled all financial obligations to the university? ''