TheCable

Twenty-one Bayelsa students on scholarship at the Lincoln University Pennsylvania, US, have appealed to the state government to pay their school fees to prevent their expulsion.

The undergraduates, who are in their final semester at the tertiary institution, appealed to the government to immediately initiate payment process to avoid jeopardising their continued stay in the institution.

One of the students, Akpos Akins, told NAN in an interview that the school authorities said that the estimated outstanding fees stood at about $970,000.00 dollars (about N300 million).

Akins said that since the payment for the first session, subsequent payment had not been regular.

He explained that the university would not even honour payment by students or their parents as the management insisted that such arrangement would run contrary to the agreement signed with the Bayelsa state government.

According to him, the parents association has been working hard to get the state government clear the outstanding fees but to no avail.

The student acknowledged the good intention of the foreign education scholarship by Gov. Seriake Dickson and appealed to him to help secure their future by directing immediate release of funds for the payment.

He said that the management of Lincoln University had been very good to them despite failure of the government to meet up with payment for some time.

“We appeared to have become a source of burden to the management. We are very worried and disturbed.

“We have been given three weeks to pay up before the school’s management takes action. And without our Transcript, we cannot proceed with Industrial Training known as OPT or go to graduate school.

“The management is then obligated to report us for deportation seeing we have no further business in the country.

“Our time and efforts would have been wasted if that happened. We want to be seen as worthy ambassadors of Bayelsa state. We are going through psychological trauma now; we cannot even focus on our studies,” Akins said.