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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, has berated the Federal Government over the increase in West African Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council ( NECO) fees for Senior School Certificate Examination ( SSCE) candidates to N50,000 beginning from 2027.
While accusing the Federal Government of making the cost of public education expensive for Nigerians, Atiku described the hike in WAEC and NECO fees “ as cruel, economically insensitive”
The Federal Government recently approved a uniformed fee of N50,000 for SSCE candidates beginning from next year. Prior to the increase, fees for NECO and WAEC was reportedly N30,000 and N27,000 respectively.
The former vice president, in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, yesterday, stated that the hike is “fundamentally incompatible with government’s constitutional responsibility to make education accessible to every Nigerian child.”
According to him, it is unconscionable that at a time when Nigerian families are battling record inflation, soaring food prices, rising transportation costs, crippling electricity tariffs, stagnant incomes and widespread unemployment, the President Bola Tinubu’s administration has chosen to make education even more expensive.
Atiku, African Democratic Congress (ADC) 2027 presidential candidate, noted that the hike was alarming as it is coming against the backdrop of Nigeria’s worsening education crisis. He warned
He warned that increasing fees in Federal Unity Colleges while imposing a significantly higher cost on WAEC and NECO examinations would disproportionately affect children from poor and middle-income families , whose parents are already making impossible choices between food, healthcare, transportation and education.
“A government that genuinely believes in the future of its people does not erect financial barriers between children and education. It removes them. Education is not a privilege reserved for the wealthy; it is the birthright of every Nigerian child and the foundation upon which prosperous nations are built.
“Nigeria already bears the painful distinction of having one of the largest populations of out-of-school children in the world. Depending on the methodology and age group measured, between 10.5 million and about 15 million Nigerian children and young people are already outside the classroom. Any government confronted with such a national emergency should be investing aggressively to bring these children back into school. Instead, this administration is choosing policies that will inevitably swell those numbers.
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“The consequences of these policies extend far beyond school gates. Every child priced out of education today becomes tomorrow’s victim of unemployment, poverty, child labour, criminal exploitation, drug abuse or insecurity. Nations do not become prosperous by making education more expensive; they prosper by making education more accessible.”
Furthermore, the former vice president said the recent increase in WAEC and NECO examination fees represents far more than another financial burden on parents, noting that “it is a systemic filter that will inevitably restrict access to tertiary education for thousands of indigent but academically qualified Nigerian students. For many children from low-income families, the journey to university does not end at the admission gate—it is terminated long before then by the inability to afford the qualifying examinations that determine their future.”
Atiku added that “instead of investing massively in expanding lecture theatres, laboratories, hostels, libraries and other critical infrastructure to boost the carrying capacity of our public universities, this administration is making access to education even more difficult.
“Today, Nigerian universities can admit only about 500,000 to 700,000 students annually, even though more than two million young Nigerians seek admission every year. The inevitable consequence is that well over one million qualified candidates are denied university admission annually—not because they lack the merit or the desire to learn—but because available spaces fall far below national demand. Rather than addressing this structural deficit by expanding infrastructure and increasing admission capacity, the government is effectively constricting access even further through higher Unity School fees and the proposed ₦50,000 WAEC and NECO examination fee.
“The result is a cruel double punishment: first, millions of qualified young Nigerians cannot secure admission because there are insufficient spaces; second, many will now be priced out of even competing for those limited spaces. That is not educational reform; it is the systematic rationing of opportunity and the gradual exclusion of the children of the poor from the promise of higher education.”
The presidential candidate, while stating that the irony in the administration’s education policy is impossible to ignore, said the policy of the government amounts to “systematic rationing of opportunity and the gradual exclusion of the children of the poor from the promise of higher education.”
“The same administration whose policies are progressively narrowing access to public tertiary education continues to project the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) as one of its flagship achievements.
“Yet, a university loan offers little comfort to a child who has already been priced out of secondary education or cannot afford the qualifying examination required to secure admission. A government cannot credibly claim to be expanding access to higher education while simultaneously erecting financial barriers that prevent millions of young Nigerians from ever reaching the university gates.
“Genuine educational reform begins by making education affordable from the primary and secondary levels, expanding the carrying capacity of our tertiary institutions, and ensuring that poverty never becomes the reason a child is denied the opportunity to learn. A government that truly believes in education invests in classrooms before it invests in loans.”
