Fact-Check: Did Ex-LASU VC Say Public Universities Must Charge ₦1m Tuition?

The ₦1 million remark attributed to former Lagos State University Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello, is real. However, its subsequent presentation across sections of the Nigerian media has been distorted and exaggerated, particularly through the use of the word “must”, which makes the statement appear to be a compulsory or authoritative directive.

In the original PUNCH interview, Olatunji-Bello was responding to a question about how public universities could achieve financial self-sustainability without depending heavily on government funding. She argued that universities needed to innovate, improve their institutions and generate additional revenue. She then said that a public university seeking to sustain financial independence would have to charge school fees of not less than ₦1 million per student.

The distinction is critical: she did not announce that all public universities must now charge ₦1 million, nor did she issue a compulsory directive to students or parents. The viral formulation effectively converts an argument about the cost and financial sustainability of university education into an authoritative statement about what students must pay.

That interpretation was further challenged by her media aide, Emmanuel Adeyemi, who said the former VC did not suggest that students or their parents must pay ₦1 million annually. He explained that she was referring to the approximate cost of providing quality undergraduate education and advocating innovative and diversified funding sources rather than transferring the entire cost to students.

The subsequent clarification is particularly significant because it confirms that the controversial ₦1 million figure should not be read in isolation from the broader discussion on university funding.

Verdict: Misleading

The ₦1 million remark is genuine. What is misleading is the way it has been amplified in some media headlines to suggest that Olatunji-Bello declared that public universities “must” charge every student ₦1 million.

She made a conditional and suggestive argument about the funding required for financial independence; the word “must” in the viral headline gives it the force of a compulsory policy statement that was not established by her original remarks.

In other words: The ₦1 million remark is real; the “must charge” interpretation is a distortion and exaggeration of the context.