Governor Dave Umahi approved a reduction in fees between seven to 25 percent by the students for the Ebonyi State University (EBSU), Abakaliki.
According to the Secretary to State Government (SSG), Dr Kenneth Ugbala the state government has agreed on a reduction in fees paid by indigenes by N20,000 while non-indigenes will enjoy a N10,000 reduction.
In the fees announced by the university for 2020/21 session, indigenes are expected to pay N88,000 as tuition fee and N12,000 as registration fee.
Non-indigenes are expected to pay N128,000 for tuition and N22,000 for registration.
The reduction, which favours indigenes more, will offer some succor to all the students.
The SSG said that the government’s gesture is aimed at mitigating the hardship caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, which affected global and local economies.
He further stated that government was aware of the impact of the pandemic on the world economies “of which Ebonyi was highly affected.
“We know that the finances of our people are highly affected, which will in effect, affect the education of our children.
“To lessen the burden on parents, especially in catering for the students of EBSU and encourage more of our students to go to university, the governor has approved reduction in school fees for the students.
“The reduction is effective from the 2020/2021 academic session and is from Year one to the Fifth year.
“This amount will be aggregated and paid directly to EBSU’s management sometime in 2021,” the statement added.
The SSG further stated that government had earlier released all monthly subventions owed to the university.
He added that additional N200 million salary intervention fund, totalling N500 million, was also released to assist in the payment of staff salaries.
“This sacrifice will be affecting some other government programmes, like infrastructure development and provision of medical services, which have become opportunity cost.
“We request our young ones to start registering for the 200 youths per Local Government Area to benefit from the #EndSARS Empowerment Fund to be launched in November,” Ugbala added.
