General Overseer of Mountain of Fire and Miracle (MFM) and Proprietor of Mountain Top University, Ogun state, Prof Daniel Olukoya, has attributed the high cost of maintaining universities to the reason faith-based universities charge high tuition.

Prof. Olukoya spoke in Akure shortly after he was conferred with honorary doctoral degrees in Management at the 34thand 35thconvocation of the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA).

He said the high cost of energy was responsible for the high school fees.

Olukoya absolved proprietors of faith-based universities as being responsible for the high fees.

He said: ?It is not the fault of those proprietors. I am one of them. I am always at the back of the poor because I know how difficult it was for me to get to the university. My parents didn?t have the money.

?But then the current situation states that if you cannot pay good money to the lecturers or the professors, you won?t get good teachers. And if you run a private university and you are paying less than the federal universities, you will not get good professors.

?So it is the financing and paying the salaries. And there is the situation of power. To run a university on a generator is a lot of money. In our university, most of the money goes to diesel. It is now we are installing solar.?

Prof. Olukoya said divine intervention through prayers would take the country out of economic challenges and insecurity.

He said: ?There is only one weapon that can kill any problem, it is prayers. No matter how strong it is, prayer can dismantle any problem.

?And so I keep preaching here that what we need in Nigeria is divine intervention.

?Let God intervene in what we are doing. Divine intervention is greater than your brain, what your brain can do. And from what is happening in the world, you can see that God is showing mankind that they are helpless.? (The Nation)