The Federal Polytechnic Nekede, Owerri, Imo State, has stated that its lecturers can sell textbooks at any price they determine individually.
The Rector of the Polytechnic, Micheal Arimanwa, disclosed this to newsmen in Owerri while he also claimed the institution doesn’t increase and impose fees on students arbitrarily.
Arimanwa said that fees in the institution were affordable when compared with sister institutions in the country.
The rector said that buying of textbooks from lecturers and/or school library was not compulsory as against schools that imposed it on their students.
He said, “Management does not arbitrarily impose fees on students. Whatever we do has a justifiable reason. Even with our increase in the price of textbooks in the institution, our maximum price of N2,500 is still the cheapest in the South-East and South-South when we checked.
“Some of the institutions do not have price ceiling for their books. Lecturers can sell at any price they determine individually. So we considered the students in fixing the price of books. Moreover, we said that it is not compulsory to buy any book written by a lecturer. Agitation about the price of something you don’t have to buy is misplaced. This is my first time of seeing people angry about the lowest price regime of a commodity.”
On the issue of the West African Examination Council certificate verification fee, which the students want the Management to scrap, the Rector said, “O/Level verification is a WAEC fee. WAEC recently increased their verification fee by 100 percent. It is the owner of a certificate that pays for it to be verified.
“This verification is paid at the point of entry ND1 or HND1. At this point, students have a choice of changing to another institution if there is any institution where they admit students without verifying their results or where the institution pays for the verification without collecting the money from students. So, with the option of alternative institutions, agitating for this reason is misplaced.”
