As at press time, the management of Moshood Abiola Polytechnic had it up and running on students portals, a timer indicating a deadline of June 18 for school fees payment for its 2020/2021 academic session.
Greeting this were the variegated outbursts of students across various departments in the school reeking of resentment over the new development.
Traditionally, the school comes with a deadline for payment of school fees, but the new feature of a timer was more of concern to students who found it rather a misplaced priority from the management in cognizance of the protracted delay over the release of the last two semesters results in the school.
Opinions swayed from how it is systematically done in other schools where school fees for a new session is not to be paid, let alone requested for unless the students have received their previous session or semester result to how the school is being insensitive to students who are certain to be issued an advice-to-withdraw letter over their inability to meet up with the minimum grade expedient for continuity in the school, such that when they get to pay for a new session, their money is as good as gone with the wind, unable to be refunded while they go back home, licking their wounds.
For students who are currently on the compulsory Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES), their fear revolves around their affirmed assertion of their programme being time-consuming, as such; they have not been able to gather enough money to pay their school fees, pleading with the school management to be considerate over their plight by shifting the deadline to a much later date in a bid to have them raise their school fees.
It is different strokes for different folks, but with a unanimous underlying message: the deadline is not favourable.
Looking at where we are coming from in MAPOLY, school fees deadline being placed after a month of resumption is no new occurrence. It has, more or less, been the practice. And characteristically trailing this is the inevitability of students voicing out over such in their respective quarters. So, invariably, this can now be termed a ritual. However, this time around, opinions are coming with a different paradigm and basis in that the school has been found wanting in requesting for school fees without having released the last two semesters results, one which the students find appalling.
It is, no doubt, an anomaly to have two semesters results of most departments yet to be released to the students and yet a new school fees for a new session is being demanded for. Students deserve to know where they are and where they are headed for as regards their hitherto performance in the school and for their programme in the view of discerning the best decision to take, going forward. Ideally, that should be the practice, especially for a new session.
You might, however, want to cut the management some slack in the light of the fact that the school is reportedly and relatively insolvent coupled with the fact that its teaching staff are being owed more than 4 months salaries. Academic result-work, unavoidably, demands significant human resources and financial resources – two mutually exclusive resources the school have been direly lagging in for a while now.
Though these can be termed excuses but they cannot be glossed over if we were to be objective. And just like some quarters have opined fairly, at least, the first semester result should have been out by now even in consideration of the aforesaid impediments.
In all, the management should be aware of students’ registered discontent over the fact that their last two semesters results have not been released, and yet school fees for a new session is being demanded for with a subtle pressure hovering their heads in the guise of a timer. That students, mostly the NDs in this regard, crave for an extension of the school fees payment deadline to a much later date so that they can have quite a spacious timeline to raise the requisite funds for payment of their school fees.
The management should also endeavor to expedite its process of result-release. This goes a long way to up the school’s image in the minds of its students and that of the general public as it is being substantially reckoned that schools who have a tradition of prompt release of results have its scorecard high-flown.
The Ogun State government is also not to be spared in this aberration as the whole saga can be traced to their irresponsibility to do the needful as regards administrative-related issues, remuneration of staff and allied financial provisions for the seamless running of the school. All these are not auxiliary issues whose effects have no bearing on the school. The rage of students is enough to underscore their consequences.
