School Fees of All Federal Universities in Nigeria (Verified, University by University)

Last updated: 28 October 2026

There is no single school fee for federal universities in Nigeria, and anyone who gives you one tidy figure for a whole university is guessing. What each student pays depends on the university, the faculty, and whether the student is new or returning. So we checked the official website or student portal of 48 federal universities for this guide. Only 8 publish a readable fee schedule with figures in public. Their verified charges run from ₦18,000 per semester in compulsory fees at the National Open University to ₦500,000 for a first-year Medicine student at the Federal University of Health Sciences, Ila-Orangun, and this page shows every one of them with its official source, its session, and its structure, plus how to get your own exact figure from your university’s portal.

Key takeaways
– We checked 48 federal universities against official sources on 28 October 2026. Only 8 publish a public fee schedule with figures: BUK, UNIJOS, UNIPORT, UNILAG, OAU, UNIBEN, NOUN and FUHSI. Three more (UI, FUPRE, FULOKOJA) publish an official acceptance fee but keep school charges inside the student portal.
– Every verified schedule is split, by faculty or programme, and by freshers vs returning students. A single “the fee is ₦X” figure for a federal university is a warning sign, not an answer.
– Verified fresher charges at the conventional universities run from about ₦100,500 (BUK’s lowest programme band) to ₦241,000 (UNIPORT’s top full-time band). The specialist health-sciences university FUHSI charges more: ₦265,000–₦500,000 in the first year.
– In most verified schedules, “tuition” itself is listed as NIL or free. What students actually pay is a bundle of obligatory charges: registration, examinations, library, ICT, medical, laboratory/studio and similar items.
– If your university is not in the verified table, its charges almost certainly exist only on your own student-portal invoice. The steps in this guide show you how to pull that exact figure and confirm it before paying anyone.

How we verified these fees (and why the blogs disagree with each other)

For this article, a fee counts as verified only if we read it on the university’s own website, its official student portal, or an official university document, on 28 October 2026. Every figure in the master table below carries its source link and the session the source states. Where the official page states no session, which happens with BUK, UNIPORT and NOUN, we say so rather than inventing one.

That rule is stricter than it sounds, and it explains the state of the search results for “federal universities in nigeria and their school fees”. Take the University of Lagos. Pages currently ranking for UNILAG’s fees quote, between them, ₦14,500–₦55,500, ₦25,000–₦150,000, ₦96,500–₦181,500 and ₦126,325–₦190,000. Those ranges cannot all be right, and the reason is simple: blogs copy old schedules from each other, year after year, and re-label them with the current session. UNILAG’s own website carries one schedule: the revised obligatory charges published in September 2023, totalling ₦80,750–₦170,250 depending on status and course type, with tuition listed as NIL. That is the figure set we use, labelled with its date, and we flag clearly that no newer schedule appears on the university’s public site.

The second finding matters just as much: most federal universities no longer publish a fee schedule at all. University of Ibadan’s official 2025/2026 guideline for fresh students names the items you will pay (a bundled fee, a Technology Levy, a Utility Levy) and then sends you to the logged-in portal to see the amounts. FUNAAB’s admission portal says the same thing in different words: your Registration Fee and Medical Registration Fee invoices are “available on your portal page”. FUOYE publishes the categories of its sundry fees by faculty group on its public portal, but the amounts appear only after a student logs in. For those universities, the honest answer is not a number copied from a blog; it is the portal invoice generated for your own admission, and the section below on verifying your own fee shows you how to get it and check it.

From our editorial team: From our team’s work checking these 48 universities, the pattern parents miss most often is the difference between a public schedule and a portal invoice: if a university has admitted your child, the invoice on the official portal is the only figure that university will actually collect, whatever any website (including this one) says.

School fees of all federal universities in Nigeria: the verified master table

The table below is every federal university whose charges we could verify from an official public source on 28 October 2026. Read the session column carefully: a verified figure for an older session is labelled as such, and it is a firmer basis for planning than an unsourced “2026/2027” figure from a blog, but you must still confirm your own amount on your university’s portal before paying.

University	Session (as stated on the official source)	Freshers	Returning	Source
Bayero University, Kano (BUK)	Not stated on portal page (checked 28 Oct 2026)	₦100,500–₦171,300	₦95,500–₦160,500	mybuk2.buk.edu.ng UG Schedule of Fees (link in BUK section)
University of Jos (UNIJOS)	2023/2024	₦140,000–₦165,000 (100 Level)	₦105,000–₦135,000 (200L and above)	unijos.edu.ng press release (link in UNIJOS section)
University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT)	Not stated on page (checked 28 Oct 2026)	₦190,000–₦241,000 (full-time)	₦78,000 (full-time)	uniport.edu.ng homepage fees section (link in UNIPORT section)
University of Lagos (UNILAG)	Published Sept 2023; no session label on page	₦116,325–₦166,300	₦80,750–₦170,250	unilag.edu.ng revised obligatory charges (link in UNILAG section)
Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU)	Announced Sept 2023 for “the upcoming academic year”	₦151,200–₦190,200	₦89,200–₦128,200	oauife.edu.ng announcement (link in OAU section)
University of Benin (UNIBEN)	Portal charges tables (2024/2025-era; see note)	₦105,000–₦115,000 (grand total)	₦56,500–₦60,500 (pre-2022/2023 cohort)	waeup.uniben.edu portal (link in UNIBEN section)
National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN)	Not stated on page (checked 28 Oct 2026)	₦36,000 compulsory, per semester, plus per-course fees	₦18,000 compulsory, per semester, plus per-course fees	nou.edu.ng Fees Schedule (link in NOUN section)
Federal University of Health Sciences, Ila-Orangun (FUHSI)	2026/2027	₦265,000–₦500,000 (100 Level)	₦220,000–₦320,000 (200L–500L)	fuhsi.edu.ng approved schedule (link in FUHSI section)

Two reading notes. First, the UNIBEN returning range covers the cohort its portal table names (students admitted before 2022/2023); the portal’s tables are organised by admission cohort, which is itself a lesson: always check which cohort a schedule describes before applying it to yourself. Second, UNIPORT lists a Technology Fee of ₦49,000 and a Student Activity Fee of ₦19,000 per session as additional fees on the same page; whether those sit inside or on top of the tuition bands for your programme is something to confirm on your UNIPORT invoice, because the homepage summary does not break it down further.

What actually decides what you pay

Across the eight verified schedules, the same four drivers appear again and again.

1. Faculty or programme. Laboratory, studio, clinical and workshop components cost money, and universities charge for them explicitly. UNILAG’s schedule is built entirely on this split: the Laboratory/Studio line alone is ₦49,975 for a new student. At BUK, the spread runs from ₦106,300 for a fresh Law student to ₦171,300 for fresh MBBS and Dental Surgery students, a ₦65,000 gap inside one university. At FUHSI, the programme spread is wider still: ₦265,000 to ₦500,000 in the same 100 Level.

2. Freshers vs returning students. New students pay one-off items that never recur: acceptance, matriculation, identity card, result verification, orientation. That is why freshers’ totals are higher at almost every university in the table, and why a fresher figure should never be used to budget for second year. NOUN’s schedule shows the mechanism cleanly: its ₦36,000 new-student compulsory total includes caution deposit, orientation, matriculation, ID card and result verification; the returning total of ₦18,000 drops all of them.

3. Level. Some universities vary charges by level, not just by entry status. UNIJOS charges its highest amount at 100 Level (₦165,000 for science-based programmes) and steps down through 200 Level to ₦105,000–₦130,000 from 300 Level. FUHSI publishes a separate figure for every level of every programme.

4. Type of university. The specialist federal health-sciences universities charge on a different scale from the conventional universities. FUHSI’s lowest first-year figure (₦265,000) is higher than UNIPORT’s highest (₦241,000). If you are comparing a health-sciences university with a conventional one on price, you are not comparing like with like: the clinical training model costs more to run, and the charges reflect that.

One more point that confuses families: in the verified schedules, the line called “tuition” is usually NIL or free: UNILAG’s table states it outright. What you pay is the bundle of obligatory charges around it. So a claim that “federal university tuition is free, therefore university is free” and a claim that “federal university fees are ₦150,000” can both be built from the same schedule. The bundle is the real cost, and the bundle is what this guide reports.

University by university: the verified schedules in detail

Bayero University, Kano (BUK)

BUK is the clearest example of how a modern federal university schedule actually works, because its student portal publishes the whole thing: 146 undergraduate programmes, each with a Fresh (100 Level UTME), Fresh (200 Level Direct Entry) and Returning figure. Fresh students pay ₦100,500–₦171,300; returning students pay ₦95,500–₦160,500. The lowest bands are in Education and Arts programmes (the very lowest, ₦100,500, is in two Adult Education programmes; the standard lowest band is ₦106,300, which includes Law). Accounting freshers pay ₦108,300, Computer Science ₦111,300, while the health programmes (Nursing Science, Medical Laboratory Science, Physiotherapy and Radiography) sit at ₦151,300 fresh and ₦140,500 returning. MBBS and Dental Surgery top the table at ₦171,300 fresh and ₦160,500 returning. A separate column charges non-Nigerian students tuition of ₦200,000–₦600,000 by programme, a reminder that the low headline charges apply to Nigerian students. The portal states that registration fees are paid through Remita and that all fees are non-refundable after payment. The page does not print a session label, so treat this as the schedule BUK currently publishes on its portal (checked 28 October 2026), and confirm your programme’s exact line before paying. Source: BUK UG Schedule of Fees, myBUK portal

University of Jos (UNIJOS)

UNIJOS published its charges inside an official press release about student-loan (NELFUND) disbursement, an unusual place for a fee schedule, but an official one, and the most recent fee structure the university has put in a retrievable public document. For 2023/2024: 100 Level science-based programmes were charged ₦165,000, including ₦25,000 laboratory fees, while non-science programmes without lab or studio charges paid ₦140,000. At 200 Level the figures were ₦135,000 with lab/studio/workshop components and ₦110,000 without; from 300 Level upward, ₦130,000 with and ₦105,000 without. The release also notes that some Arts and Social Science programmes, such as Fine Arts, carry the lab/studio charge, so “science vs non-science” is a simplification; what matters is whether your programme has a practical component. No acceptance fee is stated in the release. Because this schedule is dated 2023/2024, use it for planning and structure, and get the current session’s figure from the UNIJOS portal before paying. Source: UNIJOS press release, unijos.edu.ng

University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT)

UNIPORT summarises its fees on its official homepage. Full-time undergraduate freshers pay ₦190,000–₦241,000 in the first year, and part-time freshers ₦122,000–₦137,000. Returning full-time students pay ₦78,000 per session, and returning part-time students ₦90,000. The same section lists a Technology Fee of ₦49,000 per session and a Student Activity Fee of ₦19,000 per session as additional fees. The homepage does not break the fresher range down by faculty and does not state a session, so the range tells you the scale (the highest fresher band of any conventional federal university in this guide) but not your exact bill. UNIPORT students should treat their portal invoice as the deciding document, and should ask specifically whether the technology and activity fees are inside their band or on top of it. Source: UNIPORT homepage, uniport.edu.ng

University of Lagos (UNILAG)

UNILAG’s schedule is the most itemised of the verified set, and it is also the clearest proof that “tuition” is not the cost. In the revised obligatory charges published on UNILAG’s website in September 2023, tuition is NIL for every category. What new students pay instead is a bundle: registration ₦25,000, identity card ₦5,000, result verification ₦5,500, examinations ₦15,000, library services ₦15,000, information technology and entrepreneurship ₦15,000, students’ handbook ₦5,000, accreditation ₦5,825, medical services ₦10,000, TISHIP ₦5,000, sports ₦10,000, matriculation ₦5,000 and endowment fund ₦5,000, totalling ₦116,325 for courses without a laboratory or studio component. Add the laboratory/studio charge of ₦49,975 and courses with practical components total ₦166,300 for new students. Returning students total ₦80,750 (without lab/studio), ₦120,250 (with lab/studio) or ₦170,250 (medical, pharmacy and health-professions students, whose laboratory charge is ₦89,500). On top of the obligatory charges, the same official page lists a utility charge of ₦15,000 for all undergraduates, a toxicology charge of ₦10,000 for new students, and a convocation fee of ₦27,000 for final-year students. Two warnings belong with this section. First, this is a September 2023 schedule, the newest one published on UNILAG’s public website as at October 2026, so current students must confirm their amount on the student portal. Second, several news reports of the 2023 revision quote ₦166,325 for new lab-based students; the university’s own table says ₦166,300. When a blog and the university disagree by ₦25, believe the university. Source: UNILAG revised obligatory fees notice, unilag.edu.ng

From our editorial team: In our team’s experience of checking family budgets against these schedules, the UNILAG pattern repeats everywhere: parents hear “tuition is free” and budget almost nothing, then meet a six-figure bundle of obligatory charges. Always budget from the bundle, never from the tuition line.

Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU)

OAU announced its adjusted fees on its official website in September 2023, after an emergency Senate meeting, stating the figures apply per academic session. The structure is by faculty group: Arts, Law and Humanities: freshers ₦151,200, returning ₦89,200. Technology and Science: freshers ₦163,200, returning ₦101,200. College of Health Sciences and Faculty of Pharmacy: freshers ₦190,200, returning ₦128,200. One honest caveat: within days of that announcement, a downward reduction was reported in the press, attributed to the university’s public relations officer (Humanities ₦131,000 fresh and ₦76,000 returning; Science and Technology ₦141,000 and ₦86,000; Pharmacy and Health Sciences ₦164,000 and ₦109,000, payable in two instalments). We could not find that reduction published on oauife.edu.ng itself, so this article reports the figures from the university’s own announcement page and flags the reported reduction here rather than presenting either set as the current charge. OAU applicants should confirm the operative figure on the university’s portal for their session. Source: OAU announcement, oauife.edu.ng

University of Benin (UNIBEN)

UNIBEN publishes its charges on its official student portal, organised by admission cohort, which means there is no single UNIBEN schedule, and any page that gives you one flat UNIBEN figure has already simplified away the part that matters. The portal’s published tables show new students paying a base total of ₦95,000 (Science) or ₦85,000 (Non-Science), built from items such as examinations ₦10,000, laboratory ₦8,000/₦4,000, library ₦5,000, utility ₦7,000, medical/TSHIP/life insurance ₦5,000, sanitation ₦5,000 and a development levy ₦9,500, plus charges peculiar to newly admitted students (orientation brochure, certificate screening, academic gown rental and forensic ID card at ₦5,000 each), giving a grand total of ₦115,000 (Science) or ₦105,000 (Non-Science). Returning full-time undergraduates admitted before the 2022/2023 session are tabled at ₦60,500 (Science) and ₦56,500 (Non-Science), the lowest returning figures among the conventional universities in this guide. The portal also adds a NUGA charge (₦1,200 for new students, ₦250 for returning) and, from the 2024/2025 session, a ₦5,000 bank/portal/tech charge on all school charges. A transparency note: the portal’s live page was not loading properly on the day we checked (28 October 2026), so these figures are taken from the portal’s own published tables as indexed from that official address, and we have flagged them for a live re-check before this article’s publication date. Treat them as the best official guide available, and confirm on the current UNIBEN portal. UNIBEN’s main site and its WAeUP portal differ by ₦500 on freshers’ totals, and the main site figures are the ones shown. Source: UNIBEN WAeUP portal

National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN)

NOUN does not work like the other universities in this guide, and comparing its figures directly with theirs misleads. It is a distance-learning university: you pay per semester, and your total depends on how many courses you register. Its official Fees Schedule page lists compulsory fees of ₦36,000 for new undergraduate students and ₦18,000 for returning undergraduates per semester (postgraduates: ₦35,000 new, ₦18,000 returning). The new-student total is higher because it carries one-off items (caution deposit ₦3,500, orientation ₦1,500, matriculation ₦1,500, ID card ₦500, JAMB regularisation ₦6,000 and result verification ₦5,000) alongside registration ₦6,000, library ₦3,000, ICT administrative charges ₦5,000 and e-facilitation ₦4,000. On top of the compulsory total, examination fees are ₦1,000 per course for undergraduates (₦2,000 for PGD and Masters students), and project fees are ₦15,000 (undergraduate), ₦25,000 (PGD) and ₦40,000 (Masters). The official page does not publish the per-course course-registration amount, so nobody can honestly give you a single “NOUN school fee”: your semester total is the compulsory fee plus your course registrations plus ₦1,000 per examination. The page also carries no session label, so check it again when you register. Source: NOUN Fees Schedule, nou.edu.ng

Federal University of Health Sciences, Ila-Orangun (FUHSI)

FUHSI is the one university in this guide with a full, current, officially published schedule for 2026/2027, and it shows why the specialist health-sciences universities sit in a different price band. Its approved schedule charges per session, by programme and level. At 100 Level: Medicine and Surgery ₦500,000; Nursing Science, Doctor of Physiotherapy, Prosthetics and Orthotics, Medical Laboratory Science and Audiology ₦485,000; Human Nutrition and Dietetics, Environmental Health Science and IT & Health Informatics ₦285,000; Pharmacology, Microbiology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology & Molecular Biology ₦265,000. Returning students pay less: MBBS holds at ₦320,000 from 200 Level to 500 Level, the ₦485,000 programmes drop to ₦305,000 (Medical Laboratory Science and Audiology fall further to ₦270,000 at 500 Level), and the ₦265,000–₦285,000 programmes drop to ₦235,000–₦255,000 (IT & Health Informatics to ₦220,000 at 500 Level). The page also publishes the payment pattern (100 Level pays in full at registration, while 200L–500L pay 60% in the first semester and 40% in the second) and lists a registration fee of ₦50,000, a degree certificate fee of ₦80,000 and a Post-UTME result verification fee of ₦1,000 among its charges. If you are weighing a health-sciences university against a conventional one, these are the verified numbers to weigh. Source: FUHSI approved schedule of students’ charges 2026/2027, fuhsi.edu.ng

Acceptance fees: the three we could verify officially

An acceptance fee is a one-off, non-refundable payment that confirms you have taken up an admission offer. It is separate from school charges, it is usually due before you can proceed to clearance and fee payment, and missing its deadline can cost you the admission. Most universities publish the acceptance fee more openly than the full schedule, but even here, only three figures passed our official-source test in this research.

University	Acceptance fee (verified, official)	Session / context	Source
University of Ibadan (UI)	₦50,000, non-refundable	2025/2026 UTME/Direct Entry admission	ui.edu.ng acceptance fee notice
Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun (FUPRE)	₦85,000, non-refundable	Clearance notice for the intake beginning clearance 4 Nov 2024	fupre.edu.ng clearance notice
Federal University, Lokoja (FULOKOJA)	₦20,000	2024/2025 fresh students’ registration guidelines	fulokoja.edu.ng notice

The FUPRE line deserves emphasis: blogs widely quote a FUPRE acceptance fee of ₦65,000. The university’s own clearance notice says ₦85,000. A candidate who budgeted ₦65,000 from a blog would arrive ₦20,000 short at clearance. This is exactly the kind of small, consequential error that official-source checking exists to catch. Full source links for all three are in the sections and source list of this guide. For every other university, treat any acceptance-fee figure you find on a blog as unconfirmed until you see it on the university’s own admission portal, including the screening stage, where some charges genuinely are small and official (FUNAAB, for example, officially publishes a ₦2,000 screening fee and ₦1,000 portal access fee for its 2025/2026 application; those are application charges, not acceptance or school fees).

The universities we could not verify, and why your portal is the answer

We checked 48 federal universities. For the following, we could not find a fee schedule with figures on a public official page, so this article publishes no figure for them rather than repeat a blog number: University of Ibadan (school charges), University of Nigeria Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello University, University of Ilorin, University of Calabar, University of Maiduguri, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, University of Abuja, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, University of Uyo, the federal universities of technology at Akure, Owerri and Minna, FUNAAB, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Modibbo Adama University, Federal University Dutse, Federal University Wukari, Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Federal University Birnin Kebbi, Federal University Lafia, Federal University Kashere, Federal University of Health Sciences Otukpo, David Umahi Federal University of Health Sciences, the Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi, Federal University Gusau, Federal University Dutsin-Ma, Federal University Gashua, Nigeria Maritime University, Federal University of Technology Ikot Abasi, Federal University of Transportation Daura, and the federal universities of education at Owerri (Alvan Ikoku), Ondo (Adeyemi) and Zaria. FUPRE and FULOKOJA belong on this list for school charges too, even though their acceptance fees are verified above.

In almost every case the reason is the same, and it is not secrecy: the university generates charges per student, inside its portal, after admission. A few findings from the search are worth knowing. UDUS has published schedule documents on its official site before (its archive lists 2024/2025 schedule posts) and FUTMINNA’s site links a Schedule of Fees page; both are on our list for a live re-check, because their contents could not be read in this pass. FUOTUOKE published a full approved schedule for 2026/2027 on its official site on 23 October 2026, but as an image table whose figures text tools cannot read, a useful reminder that “published” and “findable” are not the same thing. ABU is reported in the press to have approved revised charges for 2026/2027 and then to have suspended implementing them; the university’s own bulletin was not publicly obtainable, so we publish neither the reported figures nor a conclusion. Check ABU’s portal if ABU is your school. And one piece of genuinely good news from an official source: the Federal University of Technology, Babura has officially waived 100% of tuition and school fees for candidates admitted into B.Sc. Mathematics and B.Sc. Physics. If either programme interests you, that waiver is on the university’s own website.

We will keep checking the universities on this list as this guide is refreshed; several, starting with UNN, ABU, UNILORIN and UI, are large enough that a published schedule would change this page materially. Until a figure appears on a university’s own domain, though, it does not appear here.

How to verify your own fee on your university’s portal

Whether or not your university is in the verified table, your exact fee is the figure on your own portal invoice for your programme, level and session. Here is how to get it and check it properly.

1. Start from the university’s official website, typed by you, not from a search ad or a forwarded link. Confirm the address matches the one on your admission letter or on JAMB CAPS. If you have not yet confirmed your admission itself, do that first: our guide to how to check your JAMB admission status on CAPS walks through it.
2. Find the student or undergraduate portal from that homepage. Most federal universities run a separate portal domain (BUK’s myBUK, UNIBEN’s WAeUP and FUNAAB’s admission portal are typical patterns). If the homepage links it, use that link rather than a search result.
3. Log in with the details your admission gave you, usually your JAMB registration number or matriculation number for freshers, and your matric number for returning students. Never log in through a portal link sent by an agent or a social-media account.
4. Open the fees or school-charges section and generate your invoice for the correct session, programme and level. Check that the invoice header names you, your department and your level. A wrong level or session selection is a common cause of a “wrong” figure.
5. Read the invoice line by line, not just the total. Compare it with any public schedule your university publishes (the master table above links the official ones). One-off fresher items (acceptance, matriculation, verification, ID card) should appear in your first year only. If a line you cannot explain appears, ask the bursary or ICT unit before paying, in writing if you can.
6. Pay only through the channel the portal itself generates, typically a Remita Retrieval Reference (RRR) or the portal’s own payment gateway, paid online or at a bank. The portal generates the reference; nobody should generate it for you on a personal account.
7. Save the receipt and confirm the payment reflects on the portal. Download or print the receipt, then log back in and confirm your status shows as paid before you proceed to course registration. Keep the receipt until you graduate: clearance disputes years later are settled with receipts, not memories.

From our editorial team: Our team advises every family the same way on step 5: take a screenshot or printout of the invoice before paying, showing the session, programme and each line item. If a charge is later disputed or a portal migrates, that one page is your evidence of what you were actually billed.

Common mistakes to avoid

Paying into an unofficial account. Federal university fees are paid through the university’s portal or a Remita reference the portal generates, never by transfer to an individual’s bank account, and never through an “agent” who promises to pay on your behalf. If someone gives you a personal account number for school fees, stop; that is the single most common fee scam aimed at freshers.

Budgeting from a blog figure. As the UNILAG example in this guide shows, ranking blogs quote four incompatible ranges for the same university, copied from different years. A figure is only useful if you can name its source and its session. If a page gives you a number with neither, treat it as a rumour.

Using a fresher figure for a returning year (or the reverse). Freshers carry one-off charges that returning students do not. Budget each year from the correct column, and remember that at level-based universities like UNIJOS and FUHSI, the figure changes again as you progress.

Confusing the acceptance fee with school charges. The acceptance fee confirms your admission; it does not pay your session charges. UI’s verified ₦50,000 acceptance fee, for example, is the start of the payment sequence, not the total. Families who treat it as the total are caught short at clearance.

Mixing up screening, application and school fees. A ₦2,000 Post-UTME screening fee or a ₦1,000 portal access fee (both officially published by FUNAAB for its application stage) are application costs. They tell you nothing about the session charges that follow admission.

Assuming a health-sciences university costs the same as a conventional one. FUHSI’s verified schedule starts at ₦265,000, above the top of most conventional universities’ ranges. Compare institutions within their type, and price Medicine, Nursing and allied-health programmes from their own schedule lines.

Ignoring the session on a schedule. A verified 2023/2024 schedule (UNIJOS, OAU, UNILAG) is a solid planning basis and a poor payment instruction. Charges are reviewed between sessions. ABU’s reported 2026/2027 revision and suspension story shows how fluid this can be. Always confirm the current session’s figure on the portal.

Federal, state or private: putting the verified figures in context

The verified federal charges in this guide, mostly between about ₦56,000 and ₦241,000 per session at conventional universities, with NOUN cheaper per semester and the specialist health-sciences university higher, are the reason federal universities remain the first choice for most families, and why competition for places is so intense. Before you finalise a choice on price, pair the fee picture with the admission picture: our pillar guide to the JAMB cut-off marks for all Nigerian universities shows the scores each route demands. And if a federal place does not come through, compare the fallback honestly using verified figures on both sides: our refreshed guide to the cheapest private universities in Nigeria and their school fees applies the same official-source rule to private universities, where the cheapest verified option (Paul University, ₦382,000 all-in) already costs more than a year at most federal universities in the table above, before Medicine and other premium programmes widen the gap further. State universities sit between the two in most cases, but their charges vary so widely by state and indigene status that they deserve, and will get, their own verified guide rather than a paragraph of guesses here.

Frequently asked questions

How much are school fees in federal universities in Nigeria?
There is no single figure. From the schedules we verified on official university sources on 28 October 2026, freshers at conventional federal universities pay roughly ₦100,500–₦241,000 per session depending on the university and programme, returning students roughly ₦56,500–₦170,250, NOUN students pay ₦36,000 (new) or ₦18,000 (returning) in compulsory fees per semester plus per-course fees, and the specialist Federal University of Health Sciences, Ila-Orangun charges ₦265,000–₦500,000 in the first year. Your exact figure is on your university’s student-portal invoice.

Which federal university has the cheapest school fees?
Among the verified schedules, the lowest returning-student figures are at UNIBEN (₦56,500–₦60,500 for the pre-2022/2023 cohort on its portal tables), and the lowest fresher figures at BUK, where the lowest programme band starts at ₦100,500. NOUN works out cheapest per semester for compulsory fees (₦18,000 returning), but its per-course charges mean the comparison is not like-for-like. Many universities that may be cheaper do not publish a schedule, so no honest national “cheapest” crown exists; beware any page that awards one without sources.

Do federal universities charge tuition?
In the verified schedules, the tuition line itself is typically NIL or free: UNILAG’s official table states this explicitly. What students pay is a bundle of obligatory charges: registration, examinations, library, ICT, medical services, laboratory or studio work, and similar items. “Tuition-free” describes one line of the schedule, not the total you will pay.

Why do freshers pay more than returning students?
Because the first year carries one-off charges that never recur: acceptance fee, matriculation, identity card, result/certificate verification, orientation and similar items. NOUN’s schedule shows the effect clearly: ₦36,000 compulsory for new undergraduates against ₦18,000 for returning students, with the difference made up almost entirely of those one-off items.

How do I check my exact school fees for my university?
Log in to your university’s official student portal (reached from its official website, not from a link someone sent you), open the fees or school-charges section, and generate your invoice for your session, programme and level. That invoice is the exact figure your university will collect. The step-by-step section above walks through the full process, including what to check line by line before paying.

What is an acceptance fee, and is it part of school fees?
An acceptance fee is a separate, one-off, non-refundable payment that confirms you have accepted an admission offer. It is not part of your session school charges, and it is usually paid first, before clearance and fee payment. Verified examples from official sources: UI ₦50,000 (2025/2026), FUPRE ₦85,000, FULOKOJA ₦20,000 (2024/2025).

Can I pay my federal university school fees in instalments?
It depends on the university, and the honest answer is on its own schedule or portal. FUHSI, for example, officially publishes a 60% first-semester / 40% second-semester pattern for returning students (100 Level pays in full). Other universities require full payment before course registration. Do not rely on a blog’s claim either way; check the payment pattern stated on your own invoice or schedule.

What happens if I pay school fees into a wrong or unofficial account?
Money paid to an individual or an unofficial account is usually unrecoverable, and the university will still show your fees as unpaid, so you would have to pay again, correctly, to register. Protect yourself by paying only through a payment reference generated inside your university’s official portal, and by keeping your receipt and a pre-payment copy of your invoice.

Sources (all official, checked 28 October 2026)

Bayero University Kano, UG Schedule of Fees, myBUK portal: https://mybuk2.buk.edu.ng/ug/schedule_of_fees.php/css/css/authentication.php · University of Jos, “UNIJOS Clarifies Stance on NELFUND Disbursement in the Institution”: https://www.Unijos.edu.ng/unijos-clarifies-stance-nelfund-disbursement-institution · University of Port Harcourt, homepage tuition fees section: https://www.uniport.edu.ng/?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&Itemid=78 · University of Lagos, “Important Notice on Revised Obligatory Fees” (Sept 2023): https://unilag.edu.ng/important-notice-on-revised-obligatory-fees-and-modalities-for-refund-of-overpayment/ · Obafemi Awolowo University, “OAU Announces New Fees Payable by Students” (Sept 2023): https://oauife.edu.ng/oau-announces-new-fees-payable-by-students/ · University of Benin, WAeUP portal charges tables: https://waeup.uniben.edu/ · University of Benin, School Charges, main site: https://uniben.edu/school_charges.html · National Open University of Nigeria, Fees Schedule: https://nou.edu.ng/fees-schedule/ · Federal University of Health Sciences Ila-Orangun, Approved Schedule of Students’ Charges 2026/2027: https://fuhsi.edu.ng/admissions/ · University of Ibadan, 2025/2026 acceptance fee notice and fresh-students payment guideline: https://ui.edu.ng/news/utme-direct-entry-acceptance-fee-payment-prospective-candidates-20252026-admission-exercise · Federal University of Petroleum Resources Effurun, fresh students’ clearance notice: https://fupre.edu.ng/fresh-students-clearance-exercise-commences-on-monday-4th-november-2024/ · Federal University Lokoja, 2024/2025 fresh students’ registration notice: https://www.fulokoja.edu.ng/news-flash.php?i=49&alias=2024-2025-admissions-exercise-important-notice-to-all-applicants_1732889870 · Federal University Oye-Ekiti, undergraduate portal: https://ecampus.fuoye.edu.ng/ · FUNAAB admission portal, 2025/2026: https://admission.funaab.edu.ng/2025/news.php · Federal University of Technology Babura, B.Sc. Mathematics and Physics fee waiver notice: https://futb.edu.ng/free-tuition-for-b-sc-mathematics-and-b-sc-physics-programmes/ · Federal University Otuoke, approved schedule of student charges 2026/2027 (existence and date): https://fuotuoke.edu.ng/federal-university-otuoke-approved-schedule-of-student-charges-for-2026-2027-session/

Fees change between sessions, and several schedules above are labelled with the session or date their university published. We refresh this guide as universities publish new schedules, and if your university publishes its charges publicly and we have missed the official page, that is exactly the kind of correction we want.

Planning your admission budget? Work through this guide alongside our JAMB cut-off marks pillar before you choose your schools, and keep this page bookmarked: it is the page we update first when a federal university publishes a new official schedule. If you found it useful, share it with a parent or candidate who is budgeting from blog figures right now. One final habit worth adopting before any payment deadline: pay early enough that a failed transaction can be reversed and retried before the portal closes; most “I paid but it did not reflect” emergencies happen in the last 48 hours, when banks, portals and bursary offices are all at their busiest.