Atiku condemns increase in WAEC, NECO and Unity School fees

By: Abudu Olalekan

This one is going to land very hard for a lot of parents around the country.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has come out swinging against the federal government’s decision to approve a uniform ₦50,000 examination fee for WAEC and NECO starting 2027, as well as the recent steep increases to Federal Unity College fees.

In a statement released on Sunday through his aide Phrank Shaibu, Atiku called the decision cruel, completely out of touch, and a betrayal of the most basic responsibility of government.

He is the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress.

Let me just state this plainly. Right now almost every single family in this country is drowning. Inflation is at record levels. Food prices double every few months. Transport, electricity, healthcare, everything goes up every single week. Wages have not moved in years. Millions of people have no job at all.

And this is the moment the Tinubu administration decided to make education even more expensive.

Atiku said education is the only real ladder of social mobility that exists for most people in this country. The only way out of poverty for a child born into nothing.

Every single thousand naira you add to the cost of school, every extra fee you impose on parents, is one more child that will never sit in a classroom. One more dream that dies before it even starts.

He has called on Tinubu to reverse both fee increases immediately, and convene an urgent emergency meeting with all stakeholders to work out a proper sustainable way to fund public education.

Instead of making education more expensive, he said, the government should be investing more in schools, building more infrastructure, hiring more qualified teachers, and expanding the capacity of universities. No child should ever be denied an education because their parents are poor.

“By the grace of God I am confident that Nigerians will reject these policies that punish their children and turn education into something only the rich can afford. ADC is committed to restoring education as a public good, not a privilege. An ADC government will never allow this fee increase to go ahead. We will reverse every policy that puts education out of the reach of ordinary families, expand access at every single level, and make sure that every Nigerian child, no matter where they come from, gets a fair chance to succeed.”

He said education should never be the place where the government makes ordinary people pay for its own failures.

No country in history has ever taxed its way to good education. Countries that actually want to get richer invest more in education when times are hard, not less. Because they understand that people are the only real resource any country has. Nigeria can never build a working economy while it is actively pricing millions of its own children out of school.

He said this is just part of a pattern now. One that everyone has noticed.

Every single time there is a bill to pay, every single time the government makes a mistake, the cost is always passed straight down to ordinary people.

When you are already paying more for food, more for transport, more for light, more for hospital bills, and now far more for education, the government can not honestly say it cares about the poor. Reform without compassion is just punishment.

A government that actually believes in the future of its people does not build walls between children and education. It tears them down. Education is not a privilege for the rich. It is the birthright of every single Nigerian child.

And this is all happening at the worst possible time.

Nigeria already has one of the highest numbers of out of school children anywhere on earth. Between 10 and 15 million children are already not in class. Any government that was actually serious about fixing this would be doing everything possible to bring those children back to school.

Instead they are bringing in policies that will make that number much, much worse.

He said this will not hurt rich people. It will not even hurt the middle class that much. It will destroy the lives of children at the very bottom. The ones whose parents are already choosing every single week between buying food and buying exercise books.

And the consequences do not end when they turn 18. Every child you price out of school today becomes someone who has no options tomorrow. Unemployment, poverty, child labour, crime, drugs, insecurity. You do not build a rich country by making education more expensive. You build it by making education more available.

This is not just another fee increase. It is a filter.

It will stop thousands and thousands of very smart, very hard working poor children from ever getting to university. For most of them, the journey does not end at the admission gate. It ends right here, when they realise they can not even afford to sit the exam that would let them apply.

And it gets even worse when you remember what is actually happening with our universities.

Right now our universities can only take about 600,000 students a year. More than two million apply. Every single year one and a half million qualified young people get turned away, not because they are not good enough, but because there is nowhere to put them.

Instead of fixing that. Instead of building more lecture halls, more labs, more hostels, more universities. This government is instead making it even harder to even get to the point of applying.

So you get this horrible double punishment. First there are not enough places. Second, most people will not even be allowed to compete for the few places that do exist. That is not reform. That is rationing opportunity. That is slowly locking poor people out of the future entirely.

Atiku also pointed out the very obvious irony that no one in government seems willing to talk about.

This same government keeps telling everyone that NELFUND is the greatest thing that ever happened. That student loans will fix everything. But a student loan does not help a child that can not even afford to sit WAEC. You can not claim you are opening the door to university while you are locking the gate to secondary school.

He said real education reform does not start with loans. It starts with making primary and secondary school affordable. It starts with building enough universities for everyone that qualifies. It starts with accepting that no child should ever have their future decided by how much money their parents earn.

A government that actually cares about education builds classrooms first. It builds loans much, much later.