The Ebonyi Government on Monday announced a slash in the students’ tuition fees in the Ebonyi State University (EBSU), Abakaliki.

The review, which took immediate effect, was contained in a statement signed by the Secretary to State Government (SSG), Dr Kenneth Ugbala.

According to the statement, the reduction is aimed at mitigating the hardship caused by the novel Coronavirus pandemic, which affected global and local economies.

Ugbala stated that the governor had graciously approved N20,000 and N10,000 reduction of EBSU’s tuition fees for indigenes and non-indigenes, respectively.

He further stated that government was aware of the impact of the pandemic on the world economies “of which Ebonyi was highly affected.

“We know that the finances of our people are highly affected, which will in effect, affect the education of our children.

“To lessen the burden on parents, especially in catering for the students of EBSU and encourage more of our students to go to university, the governor has approved a reduction in school fees for the students.

“The reduction is effective from the 2020/2021 academic session and is from Year one to the Fifth year.

“All non-indigenes will have their tuition fee reduced by N10,000, while all indigenes in the university will have their fees slashed by N20,000.

“This amount will be aggregated and paid directly to EBSU’s management sometime in 2021,” the statement added.

The SSG further stated that the government had earlier released all monthly subventions owed to the university.

He added that additional N200 million salary intervention fund, totalling N500 million, was also released to assist in the payment of staff salaries.

“This sacrifice will be affecting some other government programmes, like infrastructure development and provision of medical services, which have become opportunity cost.

“We request our young ones to start registering for the 200 youths per Local Government Area to benefit from the #EndSARS Empowerment Fund to be launched in November,” Ugbala added.