Oshiomhole implores FG to subsidise tuition fees for varsity students

GOVERNOR Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, weekend, called on the Federal Government to review its policy on university education with a view to subsidising tuition fees for indigent students, emphasizing that indigent students should be encouraged to acquire quality university education.Speaking at the maiden matriculation ceremony for the pioneer students of the Edo University, Iyamho, Oshiomhole said parents of the rich should be made to pay for quality university education for their children while the government should give subvention to children of the poor for same quality education.

He said: “Nigeria has to engage in a serious national conversation on the appropriate educational policy with particular reference to higher education. Just now, this conversation is taking place in an informal way. The system seems to have collapsed. Governments at all levels simply do not have the capacity to provide the level of funding which universities require to produce first class graduates. “Right now, Nigeria is running a system which is highly deceptive and is not sustainable, a system that I like to describe as a generalized system of suffering, a system that subsidizes the children of the rich just as they subsidize the children of the poor.”