Notes for File
Nigeria’s longest serving Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, last week confessed that he failed in his roles and responsibility in office.
Speaking at the 66th National Council on Education in Abuja, Adamu said that it was regrettable that despite being the longest-serving Minister of Education in the nation’s history that he was unable to solve several of the challenges of the sector.
He observed that among the several challenges that marked his failed tenure as Minister of Education were the out-of-school children which under his seven-year stewardship increased.
However, many Nigerians would identify the major problems of the minister to also include the strike embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which lasted for eight months with the minister unable to provide a panacea until the intervention of the National Assembly.
Adamu also blamed the state Ministries of Education as factors that caused him to have failed as a minister though he did not explain the role of the states in contributing to his failures in office when indeed he was supposed to be driving policies on good education.
The failure of the minister in his education portfolio is despite the fact that he is about the closest to President Muhammadu Buhari with a leverage to make demands on the president that many others may not be able to make. If he could confess that he failed despite his closeness and access to the president, imagine many others who do not have access to the president.
While many feel that the minister deserves commendations for objectively passing a vote-of-no confidence on himself, they wonder why he did not follow it up with a resignation letter.
In a decent society, such a confession should have been followed up with a resignation letter. Where is the dignity and integrity to remain in office after such a confession? What is he going to do differently in the remaining six months of the current administration after seven whopping years in office wasted?
Besides Adamu, there are many other ministers in the Buhari’s cabinet that are unknown or haven’t been heard of even by the media since they were sworn in, indicating that they have not been performing. They need to equally pass the same verdict on themselves.
