You Need To Read What These Students Said About Jonathan After Their First Convocation

It was a Tuesday morning at the Federal University of Oye Ekiti (FUOYE), Ekiti state and the students are warming up for the Christmas break as the years winds down.

It is not a top class university yet with a lot of great facilities, but the students seem happy to be part of this young institution.

An entrance to the Federal University, Oye Ekiti, Ekiti state. Photo credit: Adedayo Ademuwagun

Former president Goodluck Jonathan created FUOYE and eight other universities four years ago to expand access to university education and make sure every state in the country has at least one federal university. But at the time, a lot of people criticised the president for creating the new schools saying the money should have been spent to upgrade the existing ones.

Every year, over one million young Nigerians sit for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), hoping to gain admission to the university. But just a fraction of them actually make it, largely because existing universities simply do not have the capacity to take as many students. The demand for university education in Nigeria has clearly ballooned over the years.

Tosin wrote the UTME in 2013 and 2014, choosing University of Ibadan and University of Ilorin respectively, but on both occasions, failed to get in even though she had good grades on the admission tests. But, this year she wrote the UTME a third time, picked FUOYE, and duly gained admission.

Ibukun, a student of FUOYE. Photo: Adedayo Ademuwagun

She says, “The interesting thing is that I scored even slightly lower this year on the UTME than I did when I applied to other schools last year and the previous year. So I’ll say creating this university has benefited me personally, because if it wasn’t for this opportunity, maybe I’ll still be out there writing JAMB today.”

The school recently produced its first set of graduates and there has been considerable progress in the past four years, but still a lot needs to be done. Most parts of the university main campus is just bush and bare land. The students say facilities are grossly inadequate and that management needs to step up on that.

One student named Femi tells Naij, “If you look around you’ll see students hanging around under trees, whereas in other schools there are parks where students can sit comfortably to study. I’m studying theatre/media arts and we don’t even have a theatre. The school still has a long way to go in terms of infrastructure.”

Deborah, another student of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti, Ekiti state. Photo: Adedayo Ademuwagun

Students however, have a problem with the school fees.

Ibukun, a 300-level Mathematics student, says, “The fees are too high considering this is a federal university. Returning students pay as much as N80,000 a year when students in old federal universities pay less than half of that. I know it’s a new university, but then the government should bring down the cost to make it more affordable.”

Overall, the students agree that developing this school will take time, but that establishing the school in the first place was a good start.

In her submission, Deborah says, “I agree that government should spend more to upgrade old universities, but I think it was also good the Jonathan government created more universities so that the system can take in more young people like me who want to attend a university.”

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