Students at the College of Health Sciences and Technology in Jega, Kebbi State, have taken matters into their own hands, and it wasn’t pretty. Furious over alleged extortion, these students torched the residence of Provost Haruna Saidu-Sauwa and trashed his vehicle, turning what was supposed to be a protest into a fiery riot.
The whole mess began when the college management demanded an extra N65,000 from 250 graduating students for index registration under a public health programme. This was on top of the N30,000 the students had already paid. In total, it added up to a whopping N23 million allegedly squeezed from the students.
Now, you would think that a reputable institution like this would have transparency at its core, but nope! The college combined its new public health programme with the Environmental Health Department, and this supposedly required the extra cash for certification. To the students, this smelled like pure extortion.
So what did they do? They didn’t just write letters or hold peaceful protests. No, they went full rage mode, stoning cars and setting the provost’s house ablaze. It’s clear they had enough of the so-called “administrative fees” that were draining their pockets with no clear justification.
And where were the college staff when all this was going down? Well, they bolted out of there, leaving the campus in chaos until the police finally showed up.
Speaking of the police, the Kebbi Police Command’s Public Relations Officer, Nafiu Abubakar, had little to say except that more details would be released once they gathered information from the Divisional Police Officer.
The college’s reputation is now on the line, and rightly so. How can an institution claim to produce skilled healthcare professionals when it can’t even manage its finances without sparking outrage? What happened to ethical standards? Or are those just fancy words in a mission statement nobody bothers to follow?
This incident raises a much bigger issue about the way schools in Nigeria handle their students’ fees. How many more institutions are quietly exploiting students under the guise of administrative needs? And will anything change, or will students across the country have to start burning down buildings just to be heard? One thing’s clear: trust in the system is burning as fast as the provost’s house.
