ASUU: BUK postpones exams amid salary cut protest

Lectures won’t stop, says NAMDA

Bayero University, Kano (BUK) has rescheduled all academic activities, including the examinations slated for today, following a lecture-free and protest period declared by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

The examinations were scheduled to hold from November 17 to December 8, 2022.

A statement signed by BUK Secretary, of Information and Publication, Bala Abdullahi, on behalf of the registrar, noted that academic activities had been postponed.

In the notice published in the university’s bulletin, the management informed the affected faculties and departments of the urgent need to comply.

Vice Chairperson of ASUU, BUK branch, Dr. Sagir Saleh, told The Guardian that the union opted to protest and declare a lecture-free day to show “total rejection of amputated salary” paid to members for the month of September.

Saleh insisted that ASUU was embarking on the protest as a warning and would not hesitate to take fresh action that might hurt the system. He said ASUU would use the occasion to submit a protest letter to the vice chancellor for onward delivery to the education minister.

“We have called off the strike because of the court order and the intervention of the House of Representatives Speaker. The promise was that all our entitlements would be paid. But to our dismay, the Federal Government decided to pay half salary for September.

“It is upon this action that ASUU called a National Executive Council (NEC) meeting, where resolutions were made. Part of the resolution is that all branches should embark on one day of no academic work. On that day, we will hold a special congress and later proceed on a local protest within the university. We will also visit the VC,” Saleh noted.

MEANWHILE, the Coordinator, of the National Association of Medical and Dental Academics (NAMDA), BUK branch, Dr. Usman Bashir, has dissociated his members from the planned protest.

Bashir stressed that though members of NAMDA suffered the same ill-treatment from the Federal Government, joining any struggle with ASUU would further worsen the situation.

He said: “We are not going on any protest with ASUU because we are no longer in the same academic union. We have our peculiar matters and we prefer to address our issues separately.

“Remember, the faculties of Health, Health Sciences and Dentistry run different programmes. The students have lost some time. So, we can not afford to waste any more academic sessions.”