Management of the Rivers State University, Nkpolu Worukor in Port Harcourt has insisted on their ‘No Fees, No Examination drive,’ saying that  there is no going back as this has posed a lot of challenge and stress to the school.
The Vice Chancellor, Prof. Nlerum Okogbule, stated this at a news briefing in Port Harcourt last Monday, ahead of the university’s 34th convocation held from December 8, 2022 to December 10, 2022.
Prof. Okogbule said while it was a difficult decision to arrive at, the policy was already yielding positive fruits to the delight of the management, stressing that it has drastically reduced the stress of going back to compute past years’ results.
He said, “It is necessary to mention here that the policy of no school fees, no examination has paid off handsomely. We were in a very sad situation where some students in level 300 had not paid fees at all, and so did not have matriculation numbers.
“They were writing their names on sheets of paper during examinations. That is clearly non-acceptable to us as a university. It is on the strength of that we insisted that students have to pay their fees to have their matriculation numbers,” he said.
The VC however said management had extended the window to enable more students pay their school fees before the policy was enforced.
According to Okogbule, “From this (no fees, no exam) exercise, over 3000 who would otherwise not have paid their fees, have done so now.
“Three local government areas eventually came to the rescue of some of their students, particularly final year students. We have as agreed scheduled special examinations for only those who paid their fees later. That examinations were held from Monday  December 12, 2022. So, the policy still stands.”
He said the university had been creditably performing its main task of producing high level manpower to meet the aspirations of the people of the Niger Delta, and respond to the peculiar environmental challenges of the region and Nigeria as a whole.

By: Susan Serekara-Nwikhana