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Students of the School of Nursing at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital (NAUTH), Nnewi, on Tuesday staged a protest over what they described as a sharp increase in their tuition fees from ₦90,000 to ₦580,000.
The fee adjustment was reportedly communicated through an internal memo issued on January 23 by the chairman of the board of the NAUTH College of Nursing, announcing a review of students’ school fees.
Angered by the development, the students took to the streets, carrying placards and blocking the school gate to express their dissatisfaction.
The protesting students said the increase came at a time they were also raising concerns about the rising cost of accommodation around the institution.
Responding to the protest, the Chief Medical Director of NAUTH, Prof. Joseph Ugboaja, acknowledged that the fees had been increased but described them as still affordable compared with other nursing schools in the region.
According to him, the new board of the college proposed the adjustment as part of efforts to improve standards in the institution.
“We will meet with members of the board who proposed the new tuition and also with the students’ union leadership to resolve the issues,” Ugboaja said.
He explained that the board proposed the ₦580,000 fee, which was subsequently approved by the management, but added that there was room for further review through dialogue with relevant stakeholders.
“Our fees have been very low over the years, and even with the increment we still remain among the lowest in the South-East. While students who were previously paying ₦90,000 may find the increase significant, the aim is to maintain standards,” he said.
On concerns about accommodation costs, the chief medical director clarified that the institution does not own hostels, noting that most available accommodations are privately owned and arranged directly between students and hostel operators.
Also commenting on the situation, the institution’s Public Relations Officer, Mrs. Chunyere Onwuka, said the leadership of the students’ union was not involved in organising the protest.
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“I do not know those who organised the protest, but the adjustment in fees is moderate,” she said.
Onwuka added that the revised fees cover additional services, including feeding and transportation for clinical postings to Enugu.
She maintained that a comparison with other nursing schools in the South-East shows that NAUTH’s fees remain relatively lower, noting that some institutions charge up to ₦800,000 for tuition.
In other news, the Federal Government pledged policy intervention on Monday to rescue Nigeria’s rice processing industry after smuggled imports forced approximately 90 mills to shut down and pushed the remaining facilities to operate at a fraction of their capacity, a crisis that threatens over 100,000 direct jobs and the livelihoods of more than 10 million farmers across the agriculture value chain.
Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment John Owan Enoh convened an emergency meeting in Abuja with the Rice Processors Association of Nigeria to assess the scale of the collapse and map out a government response. Enoh said rice remains a strategic commodity due to its high consumption across Nigeria, making it essential for government policies to support sustainable production, processing, and stable supply. He warned that growing volumes of cheaper smuggled rice were undermining local investment and production. “When smuggled rice is sold at prices far below locally processed rice, it threatens domestic production. Government will take necessary policy actions to protect local industry,” he said.
RIPAN Director-General Andy Ekwelem told the meeting the damage was already severe. Smuggled rice was entering Nigerian markets at prices domestic millers could not match, because the contraband carried no import duties or levies.
“Smuggled rice enters the Nigerian market at prices that local producers simply cannot compete with. This has forced many rice mills to shut down, while the remaining mills are operating at only 30 to 70 per cent of capacity,” Ekwelem said. Nigeria currently has approximately 260 rice mills, with the highest concentration located in Kano, Kaduna, and Ebonyi states, where rice production and processing activities are most significant. The closure of 90 facilities represents roughly one-third of that total capacity eliminated in a single wave of competitive pressure.
Enoh said the engagement followed the recent unveiling of Nigeria’s industrial policy aimed at boosting value addition and strengthening the manufacturing sector’s contribution to the national economy. He added that the goal was to ensure both affordability of rice for consumers and adequate protection for domestic producers who had invested significantly in local production. He urged RIPAN and other industry stakeholders to provide credible, current data to enable the government to design targeted policies, emphasizing that transparent sector data was a prerequisite for effective intervention and that responsible industry conduct would determine how seriously government would treat the sector’s advocacy.
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The primary smuggling corridor runs between Cotonou in Benin Republic and Lagos, a few hours’ drive across Nigeria’s southwestern border. Nigeria’s official import duty structure imposes a 10 percent import duty and a 50 percent levy on foreign rice — a combined charge of 60 percent designed to protect domestic producers.
Smuggled rice bypasses these charges entirely, entering markets with no tariffs or duties, and is therefore significantly cheaper than domestically grown and milled rice. The general manager of Labana Rice Mill in Kebbi State, one of the country’s largest, said that for every 50kg bag of rice, millers were losing between N15,000 and N20,000 because paddy procurement costs had remained high while selling prices collapsed under the weight of smuggled competition.
“The worse is the fact that the rice mills are not selling because Nigerians prefer foreign rice, not knowing that most of the smuggled rice is expired but re-bagged for that purpose,” he said.
The structural vulnerabilities compounding the smuggling crisis include chronic electricity shortfalls that force mills to run on diesel generators at enormous cost, rising paddy prices driven by insecurity in farming communities across the North-West and North-East, and weak road infrastructure that inflates logistics costs between paddy production zones and processing facilities. An agricultural economist, Mamun Mallam, said Nigeria’s paddy production could fall to 4 million metric tonnes in 2026 from 10 million metric tonnes in 2018 if insecurity, flood disasters, and lack of farmer incentives continue unchecked. The combination of rising production costs and collapsing market prices had squeezed margins to the point where shutting down became more rational than continuing to operate at a loss.
