When ₦500 School Fees Becomes a Luxury: My account of impacts with MOK Foundation

By Jimoh Taofik Adekunle

Do you know there are some parents who cannot afford to pay ₦500–₦700 as school fees for their children in public schools?

This may seem absurd, but it comes from my personal experience with the Muhydeen Okunlola Kayode (MOK) Foundation.

In mid-May 2025, I was part of the MOK Foundation team led by its Executive Director, Mr Saheed Lawal Temi Tope Sa’eed that paid school fees for 130 students during courtesy visits to 24 schools in two sessions in Offa LG (11 schools on the first day and 13 on the second. A total of 130 students had their school fees for the term paid during visits. 105 the first day and 25 pupils had theirs paid during the second)

The Foundation also distributed writing materials to pupils from Primary 1 to 3 in all these schools.

In Offa LG, I followed the team to report the distribution to these schools. What I found there was appalling, not appealing. I came to understand that there were some parents who could not afford as little as ₦500 as school fees.

I did not know how to react to that because I could see some pupils who were not wearing good clothes or sandals. I also came to understand that there were parents who said they could not afford ₦500 to ₦700 (depending on the school) per term for their child.

When we reached a religious school, one of the teachers told us that some pupils skipped school for days—or even a whole week. There was a particular case of one who skipped school for three days. When the mother brought him to school on the fourth day, she explained that from Monday to Tuesday, they had not eaten anything at home. It was on Wednesday that God provided them food, so they returned with their child the next day. I did not know how to react to that, but my eyes were misty.

If a parent cannot feed his or her child for one or two days, I cannot imagine a whole household going without food for a day—let alone two. Yes, my four siblings and I were raised by my mom, but there was never a day she did not provide at least two meals daily. We never ran out of food in our house. Mother always found a way.

The teachers also told us that there were students whose school fees they paid themselves because they saw them as exceptional pupils. If they let such pupils go, the class would have very few students left. They would then wait for any politician or foundation, like ours, to come around.

In almost all the schools we visited, we discovered they kept a register for students without uniforms and for those who had not paid their school fees. They would present it to you, call the pupils out, and you would look at them and say, “Oh, come on.”

Taofik Adekunle Jimoh (JAAT) is the Editor of News Bulletin Nigeria