The management of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital (NAUTH) has suspended the implementation of the newly introduced ₦580,000 tuition fee for nursing students following protests by students of the institution.

The Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Prof. Joseph Ugboaja, announced the decision during an appearance on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme on Thursday.

The fee hike had sparked outrage in recent days after nursing students protested a 500 per cent increase in tuition fees from ₦90,000 to ₦580,000.

According to Prof. Ugboaja, the decision to suspend the new fee followed meetings with student leaders, the school management and the governing board after the protest.

“What the students complained was that they were not carried along at the final decision making for the fees. They know that there was a review, their opinion was sorted, but at the level of taking decision they said there were not carried along.

“So, I had a meeting with them, I had a session with the school management, I also had a session with the board and we have decided that the management will suspend the implementation of the new policy.

“So, we have stopped it and then the committee is now going back to them to have a session with the students and all of them will come together and agree on the way forward,” he said.

He noted that the protest was not initiated by the student leaders but was largely driven by concerns that students were not properly involved in the final decision-making process regarding the fee review.

‘Fee Still Lowest In South-East’

Despite the suspension, Prof. Ugboaja defended the proposed fee, maintaining that the ₦580,000 tuition remains the lowest in the South-East region.

He explained that the review became necessary following the transition from the basic nursing programme to a National Diploma and Higher National Diploma structure.

“What we were running before is the RN/RM programme, that is the basic nursing programme but recently we moved to the ND programme articulated by the Nigerian Nursing and Midwifery Council. So, we are now running the ND/HND programme,” Prof. Ugboaja said.

“Now we have two sets of students, the basic nursing and basic midwifery students and then we have the ND and HND students. People that were paying the N90,000 are the basic nursing and midwifery students. But the ND and HND students, they have paid the fees, they don’t have issues, people that have issues are the people that have been paying the ₦90,000.

“The basic nursing and basic midwifery students have been paying the ₦90,000 since the school commenced, in fact we have not reviewed our fees since we started the school, that fee has been paid like that. Now what the board did was to adjust the fees to come up with current realities. Even with the ₦580,000, our fee remains the lowest in the region, you can find out, I can give you the comparative figures.”

Funding Challenges

The CMD also lamented that teaching hospitals do not benefit from intervention funds from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), which he said contributed to the need for an upward review of the fees.

He added that the fee adjustment was also linked to the hospital’s vision of building a teaching hospital that will rank among the top three in the country by 2030. (Channels)

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