Bayero University Kano

By Sulaiman Maijama’a

Seeing some photographs yesterday that we took in 2019 when we were leaving Sa’adu Zungur Hall of the Bayero University, Kano, as we finished level 200, I remembered several events, particularly during my stay in the hostel. I was filled with mixed feelings of nostalgia, reminiscing about my BUK days, the good and bad experiences, and the culture shock I had to contend with as a fresh university student.

In 2018, when we secured admission, my friend Shamsuddeen insisted that we stay off campus. I did not like the idea, so I reported him to our teacher and mentor, Mallam Abdul Ahmad Burra, to be a judge, knowing that Mallam would be on my side. Mallam Abdul directed that we live in the hostel, saying, “The experience you have when you live in the hostel is another degree in itself. Never miss that.”

The experience began soon after we settled on the 18th of March, 2019, in our number D-56 room on the first floor of Sa’adu Zungur Hall. Six of us were the occupants. Kamal Abdulsalam, Shamsudden A Musa and I were in Mass Comm, Bashir Dalhat read Geography Education, Sirajo Basiru read Economics Education, and Abdul studied Political Science. All of us in the room were voracious readers, what people call “mayun Boko”.

Our room was almost always locked because we left for class or library day and night, and so, we were addressed and addressed each other as Prof. The trouble was, when someone said prof alone, we got confused as to whom he was referring to because we were all bearing the title. One day at the Vice Chancellor’s mosque, I loudly said “Prof. Kamal”, referring to my roommate Kamal Abdulsalam, when I caught the attention of Professor Aliyu Kamal of the English Department. To his surprise, he saw me approaching a student whom I  addressed as Prof.

Unlike other rooms, our bond had blossomed into becoming a family, sharing food and water and even requesting little money when needed. We soon realised that one of us was living a miserable life. In the morning, he would take Gari, water in the gallon, wear squeezed clothes and go to lectures. We all were concerned about his condition and began to talk about how we could help him. God had saved us when News later got to us that he was a millionaire in their village. We were all shocked and began to keep him under surveillance.

I once escorted him to the Eco Bank ATM to withdraw cash. He wanted  2k but mistakenly added a zero to the digits. When the ATM dispensed 20k, we looked each other in the eyes; I was surprised that he had such money in the account, and he was concerned that I saw his money. We had to enter the bank hall and redeposit the cash instantly, and he begged me not to tell anyone I saw that money.

We began to see real shege when we moved to our number D-40 room on the first floor of Idris Garba Hall on  20th January 2020. On the very first day, one of the room members said we were contributing money to buy padlocks, something that in our previous hostel, one of us would just buy and share the keys without asking a penny. D-room is usually allocated to 4 students, but each one could come with one squatter as is the tradition. In this instance, one person came with three settlers and himself (enough number to be allocated a complete room) and insisted they stay in the room. We called an urgent meeting in a small corner and chased away two.

There was one roommate who set an alarm ringing around 3:00 a.m. daily. The whole room would be disturbed and wake up, but the person who placed the alarm never woke up before 7 a.m. It was in level 300 when my young-looking face misled this person into thinking I was a small boy. In the morning, he would toss a Lipton at me and say, “Sulaiman, put tea for me”. He would ask, “Sulaiman, what is the time?, “Bring me sugar, “Bring me a mat, “Do this, do that”.

At the onset, I thought it was normal assistance between roommates, but later, when I realised that he had made me his Personal Assistant, I called it quits. This person would buy all the delicious things in this world; think about eggs, fish, meat, milk, etc., but would request the basic ones like sugar and Maggi from one of us.

In the same room, someone spent the whole night pressing his phone but would fall asleep just before dawn prayers, wake up around 10 a.m. and pray. He never attended 8 am lectures.  We also had two overnight debaters. These people returned to the room in the middle of the night and began to debate loudly until all the room members woke up. When they were scolded, they would humbly say they were sorry. We couldn’t fight further!

In our final session, when we stayed in number D-16 room on the ground floor of the same Idris Garba hall, beginning on November 1st, 2021, we were more mature and tolerant. But there was one character who would wake up in the middle of the night and turn on the light while everyone in the room was asleep. When we complained that he infringed on our rights, he said he turned on the light because he was pressing his phone and did not want the screen’s reflection, so turning on the light reduces the reflection. When he was out, we removed the bulb. Until we graduated, we did not have a bulb in our room.

Maijama’a wrote via sulaimanmaija@gmail.com.

By Muhammadu Sabiu  

In a bid to alleviate the financial burden on students and families in the face of ongoing economic challenges, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kano State announced a significant financial commitment on his verified Facebook page yesterday. 

The governor’s post highlighted the decision made by the Kano State Executive Council, under his leadership, to allocate approximately 700 million naira for the payment of school fees for about 7,000 students hailing from Kano State and enrolled at Bayero University Kano (BUK). 

The move is expected to provide crucial financial relief to families struggling to meet educational expenses during these trying times. 

Details regarding the distribution and disbursement of the funds will be communicated to the students and the public in the near future. 

This initiative is part of the state government’s continued efforts to support education and ensure that the youth have access to quality learning opportunities despite the current economic constraints. 

Education has been a cornerstone of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf’s administration, and this latest move underscores his commitment to prioritising the welfare of students and their families. 

As the payment process unfolds, many are anticipating the positive impact this allocation will have on the lives of the students and their educational journeys. 

Recall that tuition fees at Bayero University have recently increased to an unprecedented high, which forced many students to drop out due to their inability to meet the payment.

By Uzair Adam Imam

Rufai Sani Hanga, the Kano Central senator, pledged to provide scholarships for students to study abroad.

The senator said the scholarship for the 200 students of Bayero University, Kano (BUK), which he paid recently, was just one of the many opportunities awaiting not only students but all women and youth in his constituency.

He added that he would try hard to ensure more investment in education and empowerment for women and youth for the betterment of society.

Hanga disclosed this Wednesday at an event that converged the 200 sponsored students of BUK in his office in Tokarawa, Hadejia Road, Kano, to receive their awarding letters.

It can be recalled that Senator Hanga had paid the registration fees of 200 BUK students as a response to the painful outcry by the students as a result of a hike in the registration fee.

I responded to the painful outcry of students – Hanga

Senator Hanga said his sponsorship of the 200 BUK students was a response to the uproar generated by the increment in registration fees by the university management.

He said he came to the rescue of the students due to a call by Malam Aisar Fagge, Malam Salihu Sule Khalid, Malam Abubakar Tijjani Ibrahim and Alhaji Musa Nuhu Yankaba.

“This (scholarship) is in response to the outcry generated by the registration fee increment in Bayero University, Kano, which threatens the progress of many students in the university.

He added, “Malam Aisar, Abubakar, Salihu and Alhaji Musa were the ones who called me and advised that I should come to the aid of these students. I really commend them and the other members of my scholarship committee.

“While I consider this a quick intervention, I want to stress that more programs that target the upliftment and empowerment of our people are on the pipeline, in sha Allah,” he added.

Hanga commended the scholarship committee, adding, “I wish to advise the beneficiaries to make good use of the opportunity.”

We tasked ourselves for this rescue mission considering the unfavourable economic situation in Nigeria

Malam Aisar who is also a lecturer at the Department of Mass Communication, Kano State Polytechnic said they were into this rescue mission because of the unfavourable economic situation in the country and understood many students could not afford to pay for their school fees.

He said, “I have been in the teaching profession and know very well how students struggle to pay 20 or 30 thousand naira as their registration fee.

“Some students mostly go to radio stations to beg people. So, given that now there was an increment in registration fees, I feared many would have no other option than to drop their studies.”

It gladdened me when my mother thanked me for selfless service to humanity – Aisar

The communication scholar also added that it excited him and nearly reduced him to tears when his mother called to thank him for his selfless service to humanity.

“Although I was very excited looking at the happy faces of these promising students, there was nothing more exciting than the moment when my mother called to thank me.

“My mother, Hajiya, was in a tricycle when she heard the other two passengers talking about the matter, thanking Senator Hanga for rescuing their children.”

Students narrate tribulations, thank Hanga

“I reckoned without a hike in the registration fee. When I heard about it, my mind was awfully heavy as I knew I couldn’t afford it,” recalled a 400-level student of Bayero University, Kano (BUK), with a beaming smile on his face.

The student said a new hope had been rekindled in him by the scholarship he got from Senator Rufai Sani Hanga.

Another student, Abdurrahman Kabir Yunus, said the news of the hike in registration fees paralysed him.

He said, “But Senator Hanga wiped up my tears. And what he did was a lesson to me as I really feel indebted.”

Sham’una Rabi’u from Warawa Local Government said it was underestimating to describe how happy he was.

Rabi’u said, “I am very happy to be one of the beneficiaries of this scholarship. I couldn’t thank Senator Hanga enough.”

By Abdurrahman Muhammad

David Roger Jowitt, the renowned British professor of Nigerian English, who had lived in Nigeria for six decades and became a citizen in 2023, died yesterday after a brief illness.

Professor Jowitt was an academic and an author. His books, Nigerian English and Common Errors in English, are some of the best on the subject. He had reportedly been working on his memoir before his death.

He also taught at Bayero University, Kano, University of Jos, among many other institutions across the country.

By Uzair Adam Imam 

Bayero University, Kano (BUK), in collaboration with the Civil Society Action Coalition for All (CSACEFA), organised a one-day capacity-building training on education budget tracking and analysis.

The event, titled “Education Budget Tracking and Analysis Tools”, took place at the Centre for Gender Studies, Bayero University, on Sunday.

One of the organisers, the President of the Kano State Accountability Forum on Education, Professor Muhammad Bello Shitu, said the purpose of the event was to enlight people on issues related to the education budget.

Professor Shitu stated that their intention was to help “the practitioners and civil society actors to have knowledge and skills of budget analysis as well as budget tracking.”

Also speaking after the event, Dr Auwal Halilu lamented the rising number of out-of-school children in Kano State in recent times.

He stated that “However, with the coming of the new government, which claims to top education on their priority list, we are hopeful that things will change,” he added.

Dr Halilu added that the issue of the rising number of out-of-school children in Kano state, which reached over 1.4 million, is alarming and should be addressed instantly.

The event had converged many educationalists, social and political analysts, as well as civil society activists who came from all walks of Kano to grace the event.

The Daily Reality (TDR) online newspaper management is pleased to announce the opening of its Endowment Fund Program and invites eligible and interested applicants to apply.

In light of the recent rise in registration fees at Bayero University, Kano (BUK), TDR plans to offer a grant to students who have had their articles published on the platform as a way of support.

Thus, if you are a BUK student and have your article published by TDR, please, contact us via contact@dailyrealityng.com or thedailyrealitynews@gmail.com. Please, submit proof of your student status at BUK, such as a copy of your ID or admission letter, along with the title of your article. The application closes on July 16, 2023, at 11:59 pm.

Please, join us in supporting young people’s education. Every contribution counts.

Sincerely yours,

TDR Editorial Team

By Abbas Datti

Recently, the registration fees of most federal universities in Nigeria have risen dramatically, constituting a huge financial problem for students and their families.

The current fee increase places unfair constraints on low-income people, perpetuating inequality and promoting social inadequacies. More so, the exclusion is based on financial circumstances. As the registration fees continue to increase, the desirable dream of acquiring a university education slips further out of reach for many deserving individuals.

Therefore, as a bona fide resident of Kano and a great beneficiary of low and subsidised registration fees, I will use Bayero University as my case study. I am writing to appeal to Professor Sagir Adamu Abbas, the Vice Chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, regarding the current situation.

We know Sagir as someone with an exceptionally high calibre personality, humility and modest approach. This sets him far above others. Thus, we believe he will no doubt consider the attending consequences of this enormous increase.

We have been told that education is a fundamental right of every individual, and one must admit that it is the responsibility of educational institutions to provide a nurturing and good inclusive environment that fosters academic growth and development for all students. While one may comprehend the various needs associated with running a university and the alleged withdrawal of the government from funding universities, I would like to refer the Vice Chancellor back to the difficulties many students experienced in paying their respective registration fees since before the recent increase.

The ever-increasing cost of registration fees has become a significant deterrent for prospective students, leading to a potential decline in enrolment rates. The burden of high registration fees and other expenses, such as accommodation, and high living costs, is enormous on students and their various families. Potentially, it not only limits access to education but also jeopardises the overall tertiary education enrolments.

I passionately beseech the Vice Chancellor of Bayero University to consider the urgent need for a reduction in registration fees and initiate constructive consultations with the appropriate university stakeholders to find feasible solutions. This could involve exploring more alternative revenue generation, seeking additional funding from wealthy personalities and other intervention funds, or reallocating resources to ensure a well-rounded, balanced approach that benefits both the university and the students.

Abbas Datti wrote from Kano via abbasdatti448@gmail.com.

By Muhammad Sulaiman

The registration fees at Bayero University Kano, once known as one of the most affordable universities in Nigeria, have now skyrocketed to a minimum of 105,000 for new students.

This increase has come as a shock for many students, who are expressing their disappointment and frustration.

Details later.

By Uzair Adam Imam

The news making the round about the increment in school fees by the management of Bayero University, Kano (BUK), has dragged many students into a sheer panic while others fear the increment would be the end of their academic journey.

However, the school management debunked the circulated news on Wednesday and described it as fake news meant to startle students.

Malam Lamara Garba, the school Deputy Registrar, Public Affairs, told The Daily Reality that the story was baseless, urging the general public to reject it as “there is no official disclosure on that effect”.

The Daily Reality recalled that the news about the increment in the school fees to N170,000, initially said to be leaked information, has gone viral since the beginning of the last week.

The Students Union Government (SUG) claimed to have made several attempts to highlight the negative consequences the increment would have on students and subsequently held two meetings on the process with the school management.

Auwal Lawal Nadabo, the school acting SUG President, stated that all their efforts were in vain as the school management remained firmly on its stands after all the meetings.

Nadabo, who relayed this on a Facebook post, said, “The school management, after all consultations and finalizing the proposed fees, called for a second meeting where it was confirmed to the student leaders that the new range of school fees would be N97,000 to N170,000, as the case may be.

However, asked whether what the SUG President said was true, Garba denied knowledge of the meetings, saying, “I don’t even know when they had the said meeting with the management.”

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

Frankfurt, Germany. 3rd July 2013

The German immigration officer looked at me and gave the usual clenched-mouth smile. I did the same. I am used to it. He flipped through my passport and then looked up.

“How many days are you staying THIS time.” Emphasis on THIS.

“Two days in Cologne”, I replied. “Today, tomorrow, and the day after that, I am off.”

He stamped the passport without asking for the usual – return ticket, invitation, hotel booking – all of which I had. He wished me a pleasant say and waved to the next person behind me.

I was then in Cologne to attend the valedictory retirement conference held in honour of the woman who mentored me and virtually adopted me as her son – Heike Behrend, who was retiring from the Institute of African Studies, University of Cologne, Germany, where she was the Director. She created the research category of “Media and Cultural Communication”, and I was the first African to be invited to deliver a lecture at the cluster. The Immigration Officer’s reference to the length of my stay was in response to the numerous times I had been to Germany – and never stayed beyond the time necessary for whatever it was that brought me.

The week from Tuesday, 30th May to Sunday, 4th June 2023, I returned after ten years. This time, the occasion was to attend ECAS2023: 9th European Conference on African Studies, with the theme of “African Futures.” It was hosted by the University of Cologne. “African Futures” explores the continent’s critical engagements with the past, present, and future of Africa’s global entanglements. ECAS is the largest and most visible single event under the AEGIS umbrella. AEGIS is an expression of a much wider and dynamic set of African Studies connections, collaborations, activities and opportunities within and beyond Europe. The conference, lasting four days, had over 70 panels involving hundreds of papers and speakers. All were efficiently coordinated through the various classes at the University of Cologne.

Earlier in the year, I and colleagues from Germany and US had submitted a panel, “Digital/social media and Afrophone literature”, for consideration at ECAS 9. It was accepted.  The conveners were me (BUK), Uta Reuster-Jahn, Umma Aliyu (Hamburg) and Stephanie Bosch Santana (UCLA). Before submitting our panel to ECAS, we first held an online symposium which was preceded by a call for papers. Despite sending the CfP to various universities and the Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL), the response was pretty poor. The symposium was titled Social Media as New Canvas, Space and Channel for Afrophone Literatures. It was eventually held online at the University of Hamburg, Germany, on 22-23 February 2023. The participants then were from Germany (Uta Reuster-Jahn, Umma Aliyu Musa), Nigeria (Abdalla Uba Adamu, Zaynab Ango, Ado Ahmad Gidan Dabino, Nura Ibrahim, Asabe Kabir Usman, Isyaku Bala Ibrahim), Tanzania (Hussein Issa Tuwa, Zamda Geuza), Ghana (Nikitta Dede Adjirakor), Stephen Ney (Canada), US (Stephanie Bosch Santana).

After the symposium, we submitted a panel for the ECAS 9th edition. Our panel was accepted, and all the participants of the online seminar were issued official letters of invitation to process their funding for the conference in Cologne in June 2023. As a panelist, I was fully funded to attend by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG). Umma and Uta were able to sponsor themselves from Hamburg. Unfortunately, only Nikita from Ghana was able to come from the others who could not get any funding. As a result, our panel, held on Wednesday, 31st May 2023, had only four speakers. It was déjà vu all over again – after almost 24 hours of flying and waiting at airports (Kano, Abuja, Doha), I was given only 20 minutes for the presentation.

My paper was “From Kano Market Literature to Kano Social Media Literature: The Reincarnation of an Afrophone Literary Genre.” The paper traces the trajectory of the genre from print media to its liberation in online media, with a specific focus on Facebook, Wattpad and APK files on Google Play. The paper uses netnographic methodology to harvest the dominance of and reaction to the newly reincarnated genre, which, far from being dead and buried, is more than ever before, alive and kicking in other spaces – beyond censorship or any form of criticism. In the process, the paper explores the freedom gained by the authors in unrestricted storylines that cross boundaries of identity, gender and alternative sexualities.  The Journal of African Literature Association (curated by Taylor and Francis Group) has agreed to publish the papers of the Symposium in 2024. We will have to ask for more contributors.

Another dividend for me was that I was approached by a representative of Lexington Books in the US for the possibility of publishing my paper as part of a book on Hausa media cultures if I have something like that. As it happened, I have almost completed such a project titled “Hausa Cinema” (to complement Jonathan Haynes’s book, “Nollywood”) which was to be published by the Ohio University Press in 2010, but things went southwards! Now Lexington Books is providing an opportunity, and I am excited about it.  

Our panel was lively, though, and I even met a fan! He was Jos Damen, Head of the Library and ICT Department of the African Studies Centre at the University of Leiden. While I was making my presentation, he took my picture with his phone and uploaded it to my Wikipedia page (itself created by another fan)! Later he told me I needed to have a picture there, and he took that responsibility. So it was kind of him!

The conference attendance was a fantastic homecoming for me because although Heike Behrend had retired back to Berlin, where she came from (and where I visited her in 2015 had a wonderful dinner when I was a guest of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin), Muhsin Ibrahim is now in the same institute. Both Muhsin and I were from Bayero University Kano. Muhsin was teaching Hausa at the Institute.

I first came to Cologne in 2004 – at the invitation of Heike Behrend when I met her in Kenya. At that time, I had an invitation to participate in an African Literatures project at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. Heike asked me to reroute my itinerary to stop at Cologne, teach a Postgraduate class and give a public lecture. I did both on Monday 15th November 2004. Since then, I have almost lost count of the times I visited Germany – Berlin, Freiburg, Hamburg, Leipzig, and the wonderful Cologne with its incredible, massive and stupendous cathedral – the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe. It was in Cologne in 2004 that the foundation of my ethnographic foray into critical media studies was laid. Unlike in Nigeria, where many saw me as an ‘interloper’ (as they murmur, ‘After all, he is a Biologist, isn’t he?’), here it is not what you study but what you can contribute to any discipline. I have been to Colone four times and other cities several times – all on the same mission of promoting Hausa media studies.

ECAS 2023 started wonderfully with Muhsin meeting me at the Koln Hauptbahnhof and helping me drag my luggage through various concourses to the trains that would take us to his flat: a very lovely well-furnished, and very spacious space. Upon arriving and freshening up, a massive mountain of uncharacteristically fat masa was waiting for me. Even the masa looks like a ‘Bajamushiya’! The soup alone could feed a family for a week! It was a truly delicious welcome. Once I got rid of the hunger, he took me to my hotel, IBIS Centrum.

Breakfast in the morning at the hotel saw a meeting of Who-is-Who in African studies – both diasporic Africans, home-based Africans and European and American researchers. It was indeed a wonderful gathering. In addition, I had a chance to reconnect with one of the most promising diasporic Hausa African Studies experts – Musa Ibrahim.

Musa is based in Ghana. He travelled there through South Africa and Japan, ending up in Bayreuth, Germany, where he obtained his doctorate. We met at Leipzig in 2018, and I collected his CV with the hope of getting him employed in our Information and Media Studies department, Bayero University Kano. However, the university was not interested. Before you knew it, he was grabbed by the University of Florida, Gainesville, where he spent about three years before getting another appointment at the University of Ghana. Such rich and varied experience would have been valuable to us in Kano, but the parochialism of our university system did not factor in multidisciplinarity.

The following day saw dinner at Muhsin’s house, and this time, Umma Aliyu, originally from Bauchi, joined us. Umma now lives and teaches in Germany at the University of Hamburg (after her studies at Leipzig). Like Muhsin, she also teaches Hausa at Hamburg, where she took over from Joe McIntyre (Malam Gambo), who retired some time ago. During dinner, we brainstormed the idea of two book projects – which, for me, was one of the significant takeaways from ECAS9.

Muhsin, Abdalla and Musa at ECAS9, Cologne

The first book project would be tentatively titled “Hausa Studies in European Diaspora: Experiences and Perspectives.” This will be a collection of chapters written by Hausawa living and working permanently in various European universities, either teaching Hausa or other disciplines.  The objective is to demonstrate how internationalised Hausa scholarship is. We started with about five in Germany alone.

The second book project would be a post-Boko Haram narrative. So far, the Boko Haram literature has focused on the human disaster of the insurgency – virtually all books written were from the governance, security and disaster perspectives. Yet, much success has been and is being recorded in the war against terror in the form of surrenders, deradicalisation and reintegration. Yet, no one is looking at this. Using ethnographic field data, the book project will provide another side of the war on terror in Nigeria. We were excited and promised to work on various draft proposals before embarking on the works, which we hope will be completed by 2025.

The Conference’s overwhelming focus on the multidisciplinarity of African Studies was an eye-opener—no room or time for a narrow perspective on scholarship. No one cares about what your degrees are in – what matters is what you are bringing to the table NOW and how it impacts the knowledge economy of African societies and contribute to the decolonisation narrative.

For me, Cologne is a Return to Forever – the beginning of an endless loop of research and investigation.

My deepest thanks to Muhsin for being such an excellent, graceful host.