Protest:LASU Students Paralyse Economic Activities In Lagos

STUDENTS of the Lagos State University, Ojo, on Tuesday, barricaded the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, to protest the failure of the Lagos State government to accede to their request for reduction in their school fees.

The students, in their hundreds, barricaded the road at the Ikeja, along the road bus stop, reducing traffic to a crawling point.

A journey of less than five minutes to Ikeja under the bridge from the Ikeja main road, took over an hour, as the students distrupted free flow of traffic.

The students and the government have been at loggerheads over the increase in fees.

So also has the university’s chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities embarked on strike to protest the increase in fees.

The school’s Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities is also on strike over the issue, among many others.

The Lagos State governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola, had last week, said the state executive council was considering the proposal for reduction of the fees.

On Monday, however, the authorities of the school sent the students home.

The institution said since lecturers were on strike and there was no point the students remained on campus.

According to Yusuf, the march was merely aimed at sensitising members of the public on their plight and  also plead with the market women to help them appeal to the state governor as regards  reducing the current LASU fees.

He also revealed that the students recently had a meeting with the committee set up by the state government to look into the fees issues, and according to Yusuf, the committee said the state government could not reduce the fees to N46,500 for old students and N65, 000 for new students as proposed by the students, as, according to the committee, such reduction would render LASU an institution for the poor.

“They saif if they implemented the fees in our proposal, LASU will become a school for all comers and for the poor and, therefore, will not produce highy quality graduates, worthy of being leaders in the future,” Yusuf stated.

He added that they (the students) were asked to go ahead and pay the current fee which ranges between N193, 750 and N348, 750 and that they would be refunded “if any reductions were eventually made by the state government.”