The Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos, Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe has explained that the N11,000 electricity fee proposed for students of the university was as a result of the exorbitant bill charged by the electricity distribution companies.
He said this on Wednesday when he, in company of some principal officers of the institution, paid a courtesy visit on the office of Media Trust Limited in Lagos.
Reacting to a newspaper publication where students of the University’s College of Medicine, Idi-Araba campus decried the proposed N11,000 electricity fee; the VC disclosed that the electricity bill charged Akoka and Yaba campus of the university for the month of November only was N72million.
“That does not include the bill for Idi-Araba campus, which is usually N20million. That does not also include the cost of buying diesel, which cost about N15million monthly.
“So, we spend over N100million to generate power while we get N9million monthly allocation from the federal government.
“Our students pay a little over N30,000 per session. So the problem is that, unlike the main campus that is still struggling to pay the bill, Iri-Araba campus cannot pick up the bill.
“I told them to meter the students’ hostels and by the time they did that, they found out that they have to be paying about N4.5million monthly, which is not sustainability,”
“The other side of it is that they have more power supply through Independent Power Project (IPP) at Idi-Araba. The IPP is cash and carry, it is not an NGO; as such, they also want to make profit; so there is no way the College can continue to pick up such bill,” he explained.
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