By  Olasunkomi Akoni & Gbenga Akanmu
LAGOS—Lagos State House of Assembly, Tuesday, ordered state Commissioner for Education, Mr. Olayinka Oladunjoye; Special Adviser to Governor Babatunde Fashola on Education, Otunba Fatayi Olukoga; Lagos State University, LASU,  Vice Chancellor, Prof. Oladapo Obafunwa to appear before it over the recent protest by students against proposed hike in tuition fees.

Deputy Leader of the House, Mrs Lola Akande, who raised a motion under Matter of Urgent Public Importance, drew the attention of her colleagues to the report in the media, that LASU students protested the proposed hike in tuition fees last Thursday, thereby grounding academic activities at the institute.

Akande said  that the new tuition fees were increased by over 725 per cent. She noted that the House just resolved a crisis that engulfed the school recently.

She said: “We just resolved a crisis and we must not give room for another crisis. If we want to run a private school, then we should know that we are running a private higher institution.”

Chief Whip of the House, Rasaq Balogun, meanwhile cautioned that the House should not debate the issue because it was only a newspaper report, explaining that since the government was yet to make a pronouncement on the matter, there was no reason for them to debate it.

Sanai Agunbiade, who countered Balogun’s submission, maintained that the government had not come out to refute the publication. “We must debate the issue in order to find a lasting solution once and for all,” he said.

Speaker Adeyemi Ikuforiji, while lending his voice to the matter, said “for the benefit of our constituents, the hike may not be it. Even when the fee was increased from N250 to N25,000 in 2005, it degenerated into a big crisis. I don’t think it’s proper to decide here whether the fee must be increased or not.”

In his contribution, Lanre Ogunyemi explained that a notice to the effect was pasted in the school premises to intimate students of the hike.

“On Thursday, when the students protested, they held hostage a political office holder and they stripped the person naked. The increase as far as I am concerned is astronomical and tallied with that of private schools are paying,” Ogunyemi added.