Ogun State government officials recently clashed with student protestors, who demanded a fee reduction for both the 2013-2014 school years as well as the 2014-2015 school years. Following the power struggle, government officials shut down OOU indefinitely, banning student leaders in the Student Union Government.
The Joint Action Front (JAF), in a statement issued September 1 by its Chairperson, Dr. Oladipo Fashina, and Secretary, Comrade Abiodun Arem, declared its “total support” for the demands of the students of Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago Iwoye for the government of Ogun State.
Ogun State government officials recently clashed with student protestors, who demanded a fee reduction for both the 2013-2014 school years as well as the 2014-2015 school years. Following the power struggle, government officials shut down OOU indefinitely, banning student leaders in the Student Union Government.
Demanding fees be reduced further for OOU students, the JAF’s statement read: “In complete agreement with the OOU students, the JAF considers the fee reduction by the Ogun State Government “too minimal to translate into any fundamental relief to the vast majority of students, who are from the background of the poor and working class families.”
“Also, JAF considers fraudulent the pronouncement by the Ogun State Government that the new fees regime will commence in the next academic session. We see this as a desperate attempt by the Ibikunle Amosun anti-poor Government to hoodwink the mass of Ogun State voters in the wake of the 2015 general elections.”
Moreover, the release states, “JAF is equally of the view that all the students who have lost their studentship on the account of the inability to pay the outrageous fees should be recalled immediately.”
The JAF calls the agreement signed by Otunba Gbenga Daniel, an official of Ogun State, the OOU Students’ Union and the Vice Chancellor AND Registrar of OOU, “coercive and fraudulent,” because the government had “imposed the fees increment regime on 1st February 2008.”
Further, the JAF quotes the document as saying, “That the issue of increase in school fees is inevitable. That the increase should be gradual with an annual auto inflation index of 20% effective from 2008/2009 academic session.”
Concluding, the JAF statement reads “We in JAF hold that it is possible, on the account of huge resources of the society, for university education to be made accessible for students from poor and working class backgrounds.”
The JAF further called on staff unions to actively support the struggle of the students, insisting that “the resistance should continue and demanding academic freedom of the staff unions and students in decision making on academic standards and democratic running of the University.”