As OOU students surrender, we have to ask, how effective are student protests?

Students at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ogun state are back in school now, and the campuses have come alive again. The students are relieved that the lockdown is over.

The students revolted this August to clamour for a tuition slash. At the time, a student in science was paying about N130,000 a year. Comparatively, a student in science at the neighbouring Oyo state university, LAUTECH, was paying half that amount. However, the state government withstood the revolt.

The government owns at least seven higher institutions, and this year it announced a flat tuition cut across all the schools effective next year. But while students in the other schools accepted this arrangement, students in OOU did not.

The students demonstrated in Abeokuta, the state capital, on August 15 to compel the government to slash the tuition effective the current year. But after a meeting with the