Nigerian School Fees Are Too Cheap - Oby Ezekwesili Slams Government

The former presidential candidate of The Allied Congress Party and Ex Nigerian minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili in a statement has disclosed that the cost of Nigerian university education is too cheap, that this has played a role in reducing the quality of education in the country.

On Thursday, during the launch of Edfin (Nigeria's first microfinance bank), Mrs. Ezekwesili made this known and went on to charge the Federal Government into finding a permanent solution to issues concerning the Educational sector that won't degrade the Standard of Education in Nigeria.

she was quoted saying: 

There is an issue of how do you split the cost of obtaining a University education. Regretfully, our community did not come to the realization that even education funding does not have to be a problem.

You have to have an approach that does not decrease the pricing of education to a standard where value cannot be maintained. This is what is happening now. We take tertiary education to the level where a person is comfortable paying almost N500,000 for kids at high school but once the kids go to University, their parents are prepared to join them in revolt at university price levels. In doing so, quality and relevance are compromised,

She said that she professed a solution:

Those who have the capacity to pay should pay the right price for tertiary education and for those without the capacity to pay, Edufinance and a subsidy from the federal government that is well designed will come to ensure that they are not left out of education.

Oby Ezekwesili said that we are in trouble in the country because the crisis is not being addressed in the education sector. 

Our country is in trouble because education is in crisis. A decade plus ago, I told the mission that if we did not address the crisis in education that in a matter of years. In fact, my prognosis at that time was that by 2020 that we will produce the most hardened criminals,”“There are people who called me to say you said 2020, it happened earlier than that. As minister of education, I said the problem is not about funding. If you fund a dysfunction well, you will get a well-funded dysfunction