Public universities are pricing out the poor

By Daniel Nduka Okonkwo

What happens when the price of a university education becomes higher than the annual income of a Nigerian worker earning the statutory minimum wage? That is no longer a theoretical question. With a proposal that public universities should charge at least N1 million per student per session for financial independence, Nigeria is being forced to confront a much bigger issue than the cost of running its universities: whether a system designed to expand access to higher education is gradually becoming a system in which access depends on the depth of a family’s pocket. The university may need the money, but the question the government must answer is who will carry the burden when millions of Nigerian households are already struggling to pay for food, rent, transport, healthcare, and basic education. If the answer is increasingly the parents, then Nigeria may be solving the financial crisis of its public universities by creating an even deeper crisis of educational exclusion.

The question has gained fresh attention following comments by Professor Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello, who completed her five-year tenure as the ninth Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State University on September 19, 2026. In an interview published by The Punch on September 22, she argued that public universities need to charge at least N1 million per student per session if they are to achieve genuine financial independence. She said LASU’s monthly payroll exceeded N1 billion, its electricity bill ran to about N140 million a month, and the university had to provide about N240 million in salary augmentation in some months. LASU’s student population, including postgraduate and part-time students, stood at about 85,000.

Her argument deserves serious consideration. Running a modern university is expensive, and staff salaries, electricity, laboratories, infrastructure, technology, research, and maintenance all require substantial, predictable funding. That part of her case is difficult to dispute.

The harder question is whether the answer should be a N1 million bill presented to students and their parents, because once the argument leaves the university balance sheet and enters the Nigerian household, the numbers change.

Nigeria’s national minimum wage is N70,000 a month, or N840,000 a year. A N1 million university fee is therefore equivalent to about 14.3 months of the entire gross income of a minimum wage worker. A parent on that wage would need to devote every naira earned for more than one year to pay one child’s fee, with nothing left for food, rent, transport, electricity, healthcare, or clothing, and university fees are never the whole cost. Accommodation, transport, textbooks, data, meals, and departmental charges sit on top of tuition, and for a household with two children at university, the annual bill could reach N2 million or even more. The debate cannot be settled by asking whether N1 million is a lot of money in the abstract. The relevant question is what it represents against Nigerian household income, and what happens to an academically qualified student whose family cannot raise it.

There is a legitimate argument that public universities cannot keep operating on inadequate government funding while being expected to deliver world-class education. That problem is real. But financial sustainability and financial exclusion are not the same thing. A university can raise its revenue and still create a serious access problem if the burden falls disproportionately on households that cannot absorb it. Public universities have historically expanded access to tertiary education beyond the section of society that can afford private institutions, and that role matters more, not less, when household incomes are under pressure. If public universities provide a service essential to national development, government funding remains part of the government’s responsibility, and the solution cannot be to let that funding decline while tuition fills every gap it leaves behind.

Professor Olatunji-Bello’s own record at LASU is worth setting against her argument rather than treating the fee proposal in isolation. During her tenure, LASU was the most subscribed institution by UTME candidates in both 2025 and 2026, and received a N25 million award for compliance with JAMB regulations. The university established four new faculties and two new schools with more than 30 new programmes, of which 17 secured full accreditation in 2026, and its internally generated revenue grew from about N3 billion in 2021 to N13 billion in 2025. LASU also ranked as the best university in West Africa on the UI GreenMetric sustainability ranking for four consecutive years, from 2022 to 2025. None of this invalidates the argument that universities need more funding. It does raise a broader question: if a public university can expand programmes, attract more students, grow its own revenue, and lift its institutional profile at this pace, what combination of government funding, research income, philanthropy, endowment, commercialisation, and moderate student contributions could close the remaining gap without making higher education accessible mainly to families with substantial disposable income? That is a more useful national conversation than simply asking parents to pay more.

A university’s financial needs do not automatically translate into a household’s ability to meet them. Every naira transferred from a struggling household to an institution is a naira unavailable for another necessity, and the effect is not evenly spread. Affluent families can absorb a large tuition increase, some middle-income families can respond by borrowing or cutting other spending, but for poorer households, the likely outcome is postponement, withdrawal, or exclusion. That makes this a social mobility question as much as an education one. A child from a low-income household who earns admission to a public university should not lose that opportunity because the family cannot raise a fee far beyond its annual disposable income.

The pressure is not confined to universities. Private primary and secondary school operators have cited rising diesel, electricity, salaries, rent, and transport costs as reasons for fee increases, and families already rely on cooperative savings, salary advances, microfinance loans, and Ajo or Esusu arrangements to keep children enrolled. When the cost of education rises faster than household income, parents do not acquire more money. They cut spending elsewhere, borrow, delay other needs, or, in the hardest cases, withdraw their children. That experience among households already struggling with school fees below university level should warn policymakers what a million-naira tuition bill is likely to produce at the tertiary level.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities has argued for years that the answer to underfunded universities cannot be to transfer the cost primarily to students. ASUU president Professor Emmanuel Osodeke has warned that substantial or arbitrary tuition increases could push 40 to 50 percent of current public university students out of the system within two to three years. That warning was made when the minimum wage was ₦30,000, not the current ₦70,000, so it should not be read as a direct prediction of what a ₦1 million fee would produce today, but the underlying concern, that affordability affects access, remains relevant. ASUU has instead proposed stronger government financing, better use of education-related taxation through TETFund, increased research funding, and mechanisms through which universities generate income from research, consultancy, and commercial ventures. Universities should be encouraged to build legitimate internal revenue, but that revenue should complement public funding rather than excuse government from its obligations.

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund offers part of an answer, financing verified institutional fees with repayment beginning after graduation and linked to income through salary deduction. That is a meaningful difference from asking a low-income family to produce ₦1 million before a child can enrol. But a loan is not the same as affordable education. It moves the cost from the present to the future, and if tuition becomes unaffordable and borrowing is the principal solution offered to students, Nigeria risks turning access to education into a long-term financial obligation for an entire generation before they have earned a salary.

Daniel Nduka Okonkwo is an investigative journalist; human rights advocate and can be reached at dan.okonkwo.73@gmail.com.