Kaduna Polytechnic will be closed down indefinitely as the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) of the school in a congress last Friday declared a strike action, accusing the school management of fraudulently managing the school finances.
Infuriated by the school management’s decision to stop the payment of their allowances, which it claims is a nationwide agreement which has been paid in all other institutions, the Union is asking the Rector of the school, Danjuma Ismaila Isah, to account for the about N1 billion the school has generated in the last two years.
The 1200 academic staff members have vowed not to go back to classes until all their demands have been met.
The chairman of the Union, Mustapha Yahya Bida said in a telephone interview that, “this is not the first strike. Last year September and October, we gave ultimatum on all these things, but the management called a bluff of our entire request asking us to go and do what we want to do.” According to Mr Bida, everything in the Polytechnic has gone bad and not even the lecturers have offices to sit again, as all the infrastructural facilities have gone bad due to neglect.
The institution’s problems
“The problem is just too much. You can’t believe that some months ago, NEPA cut off our light for over four weeks. No office accommodation for the academic staff. Dilapidating structures everywhere and the systematic failure of the academic standard is fast growing.
“The school has been financially grounded and no one can explain where the entire internally generated revenue of the school is going. In 2009, the school made over half a billion and last year, almost N400million was made. The admission for 2010/ 2011 cannot take place because the management cannot pay the IT people handling the processing of the admission’s database, whereas the applicants paid millions of naira purchasing forms, scratch cards. Tell me, where have all the money gone into?” The Union leader was also angry that the alleged mismanagement of the school funds and cancellation of the allowances like: Hazard allowances, peculiarity payment allowances, excess work load allowances and others were not only affecting the academic staff alone.
He said that only two out of the allowances affected the other staff unions, while the management has also stopped the remittances of outstanding loans facilities which it signed agreements to pay by deducting from the salaries to settle banks and other credit facility managers that the staff members owe, despite that the money is being deducted from salaries.
Some months ago, the Federal Government named the school as one of the Polytechnics to be upgraded to a university, but despite that, Mr Bida claimed that the present management cannot see the school through to that level as it has done much damage to its glory than improving on the level it was.
“We have declared the management a persona non-grata and we are asking for an administrator to be put in place by the Federal Government to help put the ship of the school back to place, until that, this strike is indefinite and we are ready for it.
“For the past two weeks, you can’t believe that we have been sitting idle doing nothing. Ordinary admission, except that of the JAMB he cannot do. The HND admission has not been conducted, then why are we here or should we fold our arms and keep watching, with lives of thousands of students wasting away at the expense of few people’s maladministration?” He however berates the manner at which the school Board of Governing Council has been handling the issue, according to him,
“these day, so far as you are a PDP member you can be a member of the board and just come here for the fun of it, not considering the future and when they are no more here. The Rector has hijacked the Council and everything we have presented before them have not been attended to.”
