By Aliyu Dangida
Bayero University Kano, BUK has resolved to extend deadline for the payment of registration fees to pave way for parents and students to meet up.
The Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Sagir Adamu made this known while addressing journalists in the state on Thursday.
Prof. Adamu said initially the institution closes it registrations two weeks after resumption, but it has extended it to one month which elapses mid night but will look at possibility of expanding the window following an interface with the state government to provide soft landing for the parents and students due to the current situation in the country.
Prof. Sagir insisted that the charges increment by the institution is the least when compared to other institutions, noting that it is not in it wish to make the increment but anything short of that will render the university incapacitated to run it affairs and even affect the quality and standard of education.
The VC explained that, despite the increment, it has also gone out of it own way to put in place measures to cushion the effect for both staff parent and the community to enable them meet up with the payment.
His words- “We arrived at this figure because this is the minimum we can afford to run the university. It is against our wish. We are not going to do anything that will deter or prevent children of the poor from attending the university. And that is why our charges for registration is very very low compare to other universities like that of Dutse. There fees are higher than our own.
“We are fully aware of the condition of our people, most people are not financially comfortable that is why it took us over six months to come up with a figure which is the minimum required to provide services to the student.
“We did not increase the registration fees to make money. We are trying our best to make life easier for our students by widen the scope to allow students attend classes before registration.
“We have also introduced welfare packages for our staff such as non interest loan from Micro Finance Bank payable within six months. Food stuffs, shuttle buses, bicycle loans for junior staff payable within nine months.
“Similarly, we had to go out of our way to get assistance and secure scholarship for our students. We got sponsorship from politicians and philanthropist in the state such as Sen.Rufa’i Hanga who sponsored 200 students, Kabiru Muhammad, Member representing Bichi in House of Representative is sponsoring over 160, Alhassan Ado Doguwa promised to take care of all those from his constituents and A A Rano sponsored 100 students among others and promised to consult more of his friends to sponsor more students. We are spreading our tentacles to other states like Katsina and Jigawa. So far we got sponsorship for 500.
“The management understand the reality of the economy and we cannot deliberately mount pressure on parents because we are all from the same background. Yet we can’t do otherwise. A university like ABU, BUK will require over N100 million monthly to run the institution. The Federal government only pay N11 million monthly as overhead while we spend more than this on electricity, water supply, teaching aid among others.”
