The medical students of the University of Lagos, UNILAG, Akoka, have accused the management of College of Medicine of the institution of a plan to increase their hostel fee from January next year.
The students who are from 200 to 600 levels that receive lectures and live within the premises of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, Idi-Araba, Mushin, said the planned increment was responsible for the recent reduction of power supply to their hostel from 15 hours to just four hours a day.
They said the college deliberately decided to do that in order to force them to see the reason for the planned increment in their hostel fee.
They said they were enjoying an average of 15 hours of power supply daily in their hostel until recently when the hours were reduced to four hours, making life unbearable for them.
Meanwhile, our correspondent went round the said hostel, the academic and administrative sections of the college and also the hospital area this afternoon and observed that there was light everywhere.
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The students said though they were happy to see light, they were not convinced that it would stay for long hours and perpetually.
But reacting to the matter, the Acting College Secretary, Olayinka Obafemi-Moses, said the students were not fair to the university in their complaints.
He said the power crisis experienced in the hostel was temporary starting only last Friday and lasted till Sunday.
Obafemi-Moses attributed the power outage to technical hitch from the source and had nothing to do with the alleged plan increment of hostel fee.
He said the hostel, as well as the entire LUTH community, is not connected to the national grid but on an independent power supply and that was why the people in the community are enjoying relatively better power supply than the users of government generated electricity elsewhere around the country,
“Even at that,” he pointed out, “the management has been on its toes since over the weekend and especially today, to ensure the technical fault was rectified and light restored.
“And now as we speak, there is light already, just as you have observed, in the hostel and the college at large .
“So, the students need not to fear as there is no plan to increase their hostel fee either now or near future. Even what they(students) are paying is not a fee but service charge and that is how it’s applicable to all students living in the hostels in federal universities nationwide. And within the next 48 hours, everything would have become normal,” he assured.
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