NOUN Denies Accusation of Unreasonable Charges

The National Open University Nigeria (NOUN) has denied claims by some of its students over what they described as the incessant unreasonable charges imposed on them by management of the institution.

The students had also called on the federal government to beam its searchlight on the operations of the university.

In her reaction, the Head, Media and Information of NOUN, Dr. Ronke Ogunmakin, said thCivicly is ours a WaningResponsible Youths?

e students who took to social media and some other newspapers to express such claims did so in ignorance, adding that the university’s operations are open to all stakeholders and it has nothing incriminating to hide.

She said it is unfortunate how some students of the university would be acting in such manner all in an attempt to tarnish the name of the university as well as the efforts of its management.

According to her, agitations by the students which ranged from the essence of charging a compulsory registration for research project for final year students to compulsory registration fee for industrial training depending on the course were unnecessary adding that there is nothing strange nor new about fees charged for these purposes.

‘’The students had claimed that during the last semester, 2014/2015 session, they were supposed to pay N1,000 for research, but it was arbitrarily increased to N15,000 for unknown reasons and without the prior knowledge of the students. But I want to give you a breakdown of all the fees we charge in order to get our facts clear. Registration for new students we charge N6,000, the same for returning students in first and second semester.

‘’For caution deposit which is refundable, we charge N3,500 for just the new students, they also pay N1,500 for orientation as well as matriculation fees respectively. Also, new students alone are meant to pay N500 for their ID cards, while all the students whether returning or new are made to pay N3,000 as library fee; N10,000 for ICT admin charges for just the first semester.”

Ogunmakin added: “For our e-facilitation, we charge N4,000 cut across all the students for the first and the second semester. The JAMB regularisation fees of N6,000 for just the new students as well as result verification charges of N5,000 for NECO are all paid to the respective organisations. No penny is taken by the school.’’

She said the entire charges for new students stands at N41,000 and returning students N23,000 for first semester and N13,000 for second semester, adding that the project supervision fee for final year students, which some of those students claimed not to have any knowledge about was pegged at N15,000 because it has to do with engaging lecturers from sister institutions.

She said such practice is not peculiar to the university, adding that final year students over the world pay such fees. She said the same goes for students who go four industrial training, especially those studying science and technology, adding that the university pays a statutory fee to other institutions to allow such students use their laboratories.

‘’We charge only N1,000 per student so if you really look at all of these and compare it with the conventional universities, you will understand what we are talking about. In the face of all these, we also have huge infrastructure nationwide to maintain. Our facilitators are not our staff. We get them from our sister institutions and we pay them, most of whom averagely are at the level of senior lecturers.”

Ogunmakin said the concerned students would have crosschecked their facts first before striving to rubbish the name of the institution, adding that even if they had some misgivings concerning their courses or their academic activities generally, they ought to have approached management about it so as to arrive at an amicable settlement “that is why we are here.”

She added that the management of the institution is doing its best to sustain a robust Open and Distance Learning (ODL) with improved access, as well as to make it cost effective for the benefit of the Nigerian masses.