Senator Iroegbu in Abuja
The Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai has vowed to sustain the sack of over 22,000 teachers and the ongoing reforms in the state education sector.
He stated this in Abuja at DAI’s Governance Roundtable on the role of Nigeria in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with special focus on education and health.
Development Alternatives (DAI), a non-governmental organisation committed to supporting a more prosperous, healthier and well governed Nigeria.
He had early this year explained that the affected teachers were dismissed from their jobs because they were unqualified based on the Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN) report he received, which showed that 83 per cent of the teachers scored less than 25 per cent in maths and literacy exams.
El-Rufai attributed the challenges confronting the state education sector to self-interest, adding that he would rather lose his re-election bid than compromise the future of the younger generation.
“They told us that we are going to lose the election if we continue with what we were doing but we said, it is better to lose the election because until we fix this problem, we do not have a future. Nobody should blame the federal government for poor education and healthcare, the state government should be blamed because it is the responsibility of the state.
“It is unfortunate that the products of public schools gave up on public schools. They have allowed unqualified people to be employed in public schools because there children are part of these schools.”
The governor added: “About 58% of the of the teachers they presented to us that were qualified had some contents of fake certificates. Out of the 36,000 teachers that sat for the promotion examination, 2,000 failed. We want to set a standard for our children in Kaduna State and there is no going back on our reforms.”
The Country Director, DAI, Dr. Joe Abah said the roundtable with the theme ‘The Role of Governance in Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ expects the speakers to come out with solutions that will assist in strengthening the key sectors in the country.
“We intend that this roundtable will yield tangible, pragmatic and achievable recommendations that government at all levels- federal, state and local- can advocate for and implement to improve governance, ultimately service delivery for the Nigerian people.”
He said DAI’s ‘Governance Matters’ roundtable is the first of several events planned for its ‘Development Matters’ series, which will seek to strengthen the nexus between central governance institutions (such as planning, budgeting, and human resources) and service delivery performance at the state level in key sectors such as health, education, infrastructure, agriculture, trade and investment.
