Public Universities Are Pricing Out the Poor: Education Risks Becoming a Privilege of the Super-Rich -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 ₦1 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 ₦1 million per student per session if they are to achieve genuine financial independence. She said LASU’s monthly payroll exceeded ₦1 billion, its electricity bill ran to about ₦140 million a month, and the university had to provide about ₦240 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 ₦1 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 ₦70,000 a month, or ₦840,000 a year. A ₦1 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 ₦2 million or even more. The debate cannot be settled by asking whether ₦1 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 ₦25 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 ₦3 billion in 2021 to ₦13 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.

There is no single international model for funding higher education, but other countries show that governments can protect access while running strong institutions. Germany and several Nordic countries finance higher education substantially through taxation, with many public institutions charging low or no tuition for eligible domestic students. Australia runs an income-contingent system in which the government finances institutions upfront, and graduates repay through the tax system once their income crosses a set threshold. The United States relies on a mixed model of tuition, public funding, research grants, financial aid, and, at some institutions, large endowments. None of these systems can simply be transplanted into Nigeria, which has its own population, tax base, and labour market. What they demonstrate is that the ability to pay in full at the point of admission does not have to be the sole determinant of access.

Nigeria cannot treat education as though family budgets have unlimited capacity. When the government underfunds public education, and institutions recover more of their costs from students, the household becomes the final adjustment mechanism, and children become the adjustment variable in a funding crisis they did not create. A student admitted on merit should not be pushed out because the family cannot raise the required fee.

Nobody seriously disputes that quality education costs money. The real question is how that cost should be shared. Government can increase funding through better budgetary allocation and stronger, more accountable education tax mechanisms. Universities can grow legitimate internally generated revenue through research, consultancy, commercial ventures, and professional programmes. The private sector, alumni, and philanthropic organisations can contribute through endowments and scholarships, and students who can afford it can reasonably be asked to contribute too. What is required is a financing architecture that does not leave the poorest households to solve the entire structural problem on their own.

There is nothing wrong with universities seeking greater financial independence, and institutional autonomy to manage resources and build sustainable income is worth encouraging. But financial independence must not become financial abandonment. A public university should not be forced into a position where its survival depends primarily on how much it can extract from students, since that would change the meaning of public higher education itself. Any proposal for dramatically higher tuition should also come with a clear account of what students can expect in return, reliable electricity, functional laboratories, adequate accommodation, qualified lecturers, timely examinations, and transparent reporting on how the additional revenue is spent. Parents should not be asked to pay substantially more without that accountability attached.

The debate triggered by the ₦1 million proposal should not be reduced to whether Professor Olatunji-Bello is right or wrong about the cost of running a university. Her central point, that public universities need substantially more resources, deserves serious attention. The equally important question is whether those resources should come primarily from families that are themselves struggling to survive. Nigeria needs to confront the chronic underfunding of public education, strengthen university governance and financial accountability, encourage universities to generate legitimate revenue without losing their public character, and provide targeted support for students from low-income households. Above all, the government must decide what public higher education is meant to achieve. If public universities are expected to produce the doctors, engineers, teachers, researchers, and other professionals the country needs, then funding them is not simply an institutional expense. It is an investment in the country itself.

The choice before Nigeria is between increasingly transferring the cost of public higher education onto households, or building a diversified financing system in which government remains a major funder while universities develop responsible revenue streams and students contribute within limits that preserve access. The country does not have to choose between quality and affordability. If the government continues to retreat from its responsibility while universities recover more of their costs from students, higher education risks becoming accessible according to family wealth rather than academic ability, with consequences for social mobility, the size and quality of Nigeria’s skilled workforce, and the country’s capacity to build the human capital its own future depends on. The question is not whether Nigerian universities need more money. They clearly do. The question is whether Nigeria is prepared to fund them in a way that protects both institutional quality and the right of ordinary Nigerians to reach higher education, a responsibility government cannot outsource to parents.

Daniel Nduka Okonkwo is an investigative journalist, human rights advocate, and policy analyst based in Nigeria. He is the founder and publisher of Profiles International Human Rights Advocate (PIHRA), a platform documenting the courage of human rights defenders and examining issues of governance, accountability, security, and fundamental rights.

His reporting on Nigerian governance, security-sector accountability, public finance, and human rights has appeared in Sahara Reporters, Vanguard, Daily Trust, African Defence Forum, Opinion Nigeria, and Daily Intel.

Read more of his work on the PIHRA website:
https://www.profilesinternationalhumanrightsadvocate.com.ng/

For tips, feedback, or collaboration, contact him at dan.okonkwo.73@gmail.com.