by By CRUTECH Media Team
The Vice Chancellor of Cross River University of Technology, Professor Augustine Angba, has justified the university’s policy of “NO FEE, NO EXAMS” by explaining that students owe the university the sum of 1.46 billion naira and must pay that debt.
The Vice Chancellor made this justification today when he featured as a guest of “The People’s Opinion”, a program of FAD 93.1FM radio station, Calabar.
Professor Angba said: “His Excellency in his good heart said that with the EndSARS protests and impact, he was going to suspend tuition fee payment. On our fee schedule, we have eighteen items. Tuition fees is just one of them. The students are aware of this.
“Secondly, this school fees we are talking about is the one they started paying in 2019. They are coming back to write 2019/2020 examination. Even if government pays all their fees today, they still have to pay the fees. It is a debt. As I am talking to you this morning, students owe CRUTECH a total of 1.46 billion naira on fees. They need to pay their outstanding school fees. Not only that of 2019/2020…. Any student owing school fees will have to pay.”
His statement of justification followed wrong insinuations in some quarters that the Governor of Cross River State, Professor Ben Ayade, made a public pronouncement that exempts indigenes of Cross River State schooling in CRUTECH from paying school fees.
Consequently, the Vice Chancellor said: “If government makes a pronouncement, the pronouncement has to be documented and translated and the translation now commences the process of implementation.
On the issue of fees, if a man makes a pronouncement and feels you should not pay tuition fees anymore, it will require time and processes to do the documentation and come out with data. You know that ASUU just called off strike. We need time and if the right thing is done, definitely they will be excluded from paying tuition fees.”
It should be recalled that CRUTECH’s policy of “NO FEE, NO EXAMS” was approved by the University’s Senate and implemented in the first and second semester of 2018/2019 academic session.
Although all students of the university wrote examinations during the session, answer scripts of indebted students got selected and excluded from marking. This means that affected students did not have results for that session. Therefore, such students are required to pay school fees of that session and properly take courses of the session.
The same policy is set to continue this session. This policy is not strange, considering the fact that the policy of free education does not exist in CRUTECH, just as it does not exist in other Nigerian universities.
