After weeks of calculations, quiet borrowing, and painful prioritisation, a widow and lecturer II (who preferred anonymity) at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, finally scraped together N30,000, the statutory acceptance fee for her third son, newly admitted into the university she serves. It was not easy. She teaches, marks scripts, supervises projects, and publishes, yet her salary barely stretches far enough for three university students and another child in senior secondary school. “I heaved a sigh of relief,” she said. “At least, one hurdle crossed.”

Then came the announcement: The acceptance fee was no longer N30,000; it was now N50,000, a 100 per cent raise from the initial N25,000 prior to N30,000.

 Those who had already paid N30,000 were instructed to top up. At the same time, whispers and then documents began circulating that total fees for fresh students could rise to between N200,000 and N240,000, depending on faculty and ancillary charges.

For the mother mentioned earlier, the numbers suddenly became unbearable. When acceptance fees, school charges, hostel accommodation, departmental levies, learning materials, and feeding are added together, the cost of sending one child to UNN now approximates, and in some cases exceeds her net earnings for six months. This is before rent, transport, healthcare, or basic household needs are considered. She is not alone.

 

Acceptance fees are not tuition.

They confer no academic value. Yet across Nigerian universities, they have become a non-refundable gatekeeping charge, often payable within days of admission offers, effectively excluding candidates from poorer households who cannot mobilise cash quickly.

Legislative debates and civil society commentaries have repeatedly described acceptance fees as exploitative and unregulated, with no uniform national guideline on ceilings or use of proceeds.

Available published schedules indicate that returning students at UNN were paying approximately N90,000–N95,000 per session. Fresh students’ consolidated fees hovered around N150,000–N165,000, inclusive of ICT, library, medical, development, and faculty levies.

According to Students’ Union briefings and internal communications, management has proposed a 100 per cent upward review, effectively doubling tuition-related charges. This places projected fees for fresh students in some faculties at N200,000–N240,000, once mandatory ancillary charges are factored in.

While university authorities argue that “tuition remains free”, this distinction has become largely semantic. What families pay in practice has doubled.

But context actually matters: Let’s factor in inflation, taxation, and household stress.

 

For avoidance of doubt, fees at UNN do not come anywhere near what is charged by private and state universities in Nigeria, sometimes well above the N400,000 to N600,000 range, depending on the course. But I’m concerned about civil servants and petty traders who feel an obligation to train their children in good, yet affordable, higher institutions. For civil servants, subsistence farmers, and petty traders, Nigeria’s inflation rate remains persistently high and biting, with food inflation particularly punishing for salaried households. At the same time, new tax and fiscal measures have reduced disposable incomes.

Transport, rent, and energy costs have surged. University education, which was once the most stable long-term investment for middle- and lower-middle-class families, has become volatile and unpredictable. According to national household expenditure data, education already ranks among the top three family expenses for urban salaried workers. A sudden N100,000–N150,000 increase per child is not an adjustment; it is a structural shock.

And what about the policy anomaly called acceptance fees? The very idea of an “acceptance fee” deserves renewed scrutiny. Historically, acceptance fees emerged around 2004 as administrative charges meant to cover documentation and registration processing. UNN was among the first to implement it when former  Minister of Power, Professor Chinedu Nebo, was vice chancellor, and it was between N2,000 and N4000. Over time, however, they have evolved into revenue-generating instruments, collected upfront, non-refundable, and largely unaccounted for in public financial statements. There are reports that recently, Ambrose Alli University reportedly increased its acceptance fees from between N30,000 and N75,000 to between N64,000 and N75,000.

There is no national cap, no uniform definition, and no publicly accessible audit trail. Even the National Universities Commission, while overseeing standards and accreditation, does not publish binding fee frameworks, leaving universities to operate in a grey zone.

So, where are the regulators – the NUC and the National Council on Education?

While the NUC and NCE routinely intervene in curriculum structure, language policy, and programme accreditation, they maintain a hands-off posture on fee escalation.

Ironically, the same National Council on Education recently attracted nationwide criticism for reaffirming English as the sole medium of instruction in early education, reversing provisions for mother-tongue learning, an issue many Nigerians felt was far removed from the urgent crisis of access and affordability in education.

This raises an important question: Are regulators focused on the right priorities while universities price students out?

And what about the role of ASUU and students’ unions? I must emphasise that this is not the time for protests because neither violent protests nor indefinite strikes can help at this point. ASUU and students’ unions can demand phased increments, not sudden doubles. They can insist on public disclosure of fee components and justifications and advocate means-tested reliefs, instalment payments, and expanded work-study schemes.

At stake is not merely a fee schedule, but the social contract of public education. When a federal university quietly transitions from N90,000 to N200,000+, it ceases to be a ladder of social mobility and becomes a sorting mechanism, effectively separating those who can pay from those who cannot.

For the UNN lecturer-mother whose story I opened with, the tragedy is not just personal; it is symbolic. A system in which even staff struggle to educate their children has lost moral coherence. Universities must be funded. Infrastructure must be maintained. But when the burden is transferred wholesale to families already under siege, education stops being a public good and becomes a private gamble. That is the crisis this moment demands we confront.



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