Ambrose Alli Varsity Debunks Fees Hike  

The Senate of Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, would bee meeting soon to consider resumption of academic activities in the university.

This is even as the institution has dismissed claims it had increased tuition fees.

Acting vice chancellor of the university, Prof Asomwan Sonnie Adagbonyin, announced this yesterday while briefing journalists at the Edo State secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Benin City about developments at the university.

He said the alleged increase in school fees which led to students protest and resultant closure of the institution was false, adding that fresh students had their tuition fees increased while returning students fees remained the same.

“There is no increment in tuition fees of returning students of AAU”, the vice chancellor stressed, pointing out that students of the university have been given opportunity to pay their school fees in two instalments to reduce the burden of paying once.

He said management decided to close the school as the students’ protest went violent, with some of the students attacking fellow students and lecturers, inflicting injuries on them in campus, as well as preventing commendation service for a late professor from holding on campus.

Adagbonyin said following the infractions, management dissolved the Students Union Government leadership and set up a caretaker committee, vowing that erring students would be held to account for their actions.

He described the political dimension the protest at the AAU has taken as “a deeply entrenched conspiracy” and advised those who have turned the university to a war zone to give peace a chance, just as he said a lot of misinformation was in the air and urged members of the public to get correct information from the university’s website and stop the falsehood.

The vice chancellor while announcing that 90 medical doctors who recently graduated from the university would soon be inducted, debunked media reports that the institution was offering fake degrees in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering.

He said the university has already paid the prescribed fees to the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) for the re-accreditation of the courses.