A new item was included in my fees Schedule. This Item is
called municipality. Many Uniport students don’t know the meaning of the word
though some may have heard the word before now. Hence, The present fees
schedule presented the students with a resumption assignment; What is
Municipality? How did it find its way into the fees schedule? The rationale
behind its inclusion in the fees schedule?
This assignment has been keeping most of us busy since the
strike was called off last week Wednesday. Though the fees schedule was
released late last year, nobody really paid attention to it cos of the strike
and maybe the holidays. Now, with the holidays and the strike gone, unique
students were confronted with the new fees schedule. A fees schedule in which student
s fees was increased by between 50 to 100%. Students started looking deep to
unravel the mystery behind the increment and made some startling
revelations. Items like Library
(statutory), Library (Non Statutory), Sports, Swimming pool and Municipality
were some of the items that caused the increment.
The question now is; what is the difference between Library
(statutory) and Library (Non Statutory)?
Is swimming not part of Sports? Or will the swimming pool item eliminate
the traditional 200 naira gate fee at the pool? These are the questions that
we’ve been asking ourselves. The strangest item of them all is MUNICIPALITY.
On consulting my Encarta dictionary, I found 2 definition of
word Municipality;
1.
A place with own local government: a city, town
or other area with own local government.
2.
Members of local government: the appointed or
elected members of a local government.
I began wondering the government in question; Is it the
school management? Why not use management dues or something? Or is it the local
Choba community, the university’s host community? What are we paying them for?
I was still lost in these thought when a friend came into my room. And I asked
for his views. He simply said “Municipality is tax to the Choba community”.
WTF!!!!!!
Why’ll a federal university be paying tax to its host
community? Or maybe I am wrong. Someone should please explain this MUNIPALITY
thing to me cos it’s driving me crazy.