In spite of the hues and cries that the planned sacking of 21,780 teachers that failed primary four level competency test in Kaduna state has attracted, Governor Nasir el-Rufai appears undeterred by the hoopla it has generated, especially fears in certain quarters that it may fritter away his chance for a second term.
According to the Kaduna number one citizen, his concern is the next generation and not the next election, giving the lie to James Freeman Clarke’s quote that, “A politician thinks of the next election while a statesman thinks of the next generation.’’
Bit the planned sacking has elicited questions from stakeholders, like, How were the teachers employed? Who is responsible for ensuring that only the best hands get employed? How did we degenerate to this point? But, like a raging inferno, the debate on the appropriateness of the governor’s planned action has spread to the length and
breadth of Nigeria, The Daily Times has gathered.
Evidence of a systemic problem
Public affairs commentator, Mr Dayo Williams, says sacking 21,700 teachers in one fell swoop is far from addressing the fundamental problems responsible for the failure of the teachers. The analyst believes el-Rufai will end up creating more problems that it wants to solve.
He said: “There is no ready pool of competent hands from where can replace the teachers to be sacked. I had an encounter with some of the potential recruits from the state sometime early this year in a job test. About five of them were graduates of the state-owned university. You needed to see what they turned in for me as test results:
“No logic. No sequence, no coherence and stuffed with elementary errors of syntax. I need not bore you with what these graduates read in the university. We ended up not taking any of them.’’
Why el-Rufai should tread with caution
Lamenting the drop in standard of education, a medical practitioner, Dr Abdullahi Dahiru says the education sector is not what it used to be. Abdullahi tells his story:
‘‘When we were students at Science Secondary School, Dawakin Kudu, many teachers were NCE holders. It was even difficult to differentiate who among the teachers had Bsc or NCE because most teachers then were good. Infact some of our teachers in primary school were Grade II holders.
“I have seen examination scripts of NCE students being marked by my wife, some students write ridiculous answers to questions; they even reply “Malama ,ki taimake ni kamar yadda Allah ya taimake ki. Some writings could not even be read. Some write what psychiatrists call ‘‘word salad.
“Some of the questions asked in statistics involved just finding means, mode and median of group of numbers, not complex statistics questions, but many students could not give satisfactory answers. Some of these NCE students were given admission after getting “good’’ result from “miracle centers’’ through examination malpractice.”
The medical practitioner believes many NCE graduates do not have the knowledge of a primary six pupil. “These so-called NCE graduates with poor background and poor knowledge are the ones that would ultimately be recruited to teach – and the vicious cycle continues,” he lamented.
Abdullahi however called on relevant authorities to address the issue of poor remuneration to teachers to attract good hands. ‘‘But let us know that the rot started from teacher training institutions. There is poor remuneration that made it impossible for people with good degree to apply for teaching job.
“The salary of NCE holder is less than N30,000 per month. Where will Kaduna State government get teachers with NCE qualification that are good?’’ he asked.
No to charlatans
Meanwhile, businessman and educationist, Mr Remi Lawal, has berated the Nigeria
Union of Teachers (NUT) on its role in the el-Rufai-Teacher row. Backing Kaduna Governor’s action, Lawal says education is too important to be left in the hands of charlatans.
He said, “A multinational company told me that teachers are unmarketable. I thought they were being unfair until they were proven right by the association of teachers themselves on the el- Rufai’s–Teacher saga. Education has become such an important global growth tool, too serious to be left in the hands of charlatans. We can’t continue to reward people for being politically loyal. Like every developed country, time has come for us to take education seriously and realize that we are sitting on a precipice.
“Right education, is the bedrock of every developing society. The world has since moved from the education of “I beg to apply’’. The world has also moved from the era of manpower to mindpower.’’
He added: “Let us demand quality education and stop asking for trivial things. Has anyone checked the amount budgeted for education this year? So sad.”
NLC, Kaduna Universal Basic Education Board react
President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Ayuba Wabba, in his reaction, said the policy of the Kaduna State government lacks human face, claiming that the development is targeted at reducing the workforce.
Speaking on a breakfast programme broadcast live in Lagos, Wabba said a teacher’s competency can only be tested by the Teachers Registration Council
Nigeria and National Teachers Institute.
He said, “It’s not a reform aimed at improving the system. It’s aimed at saving cost. We have seen names of teachers that have retired for more than two years before the test was administered, we’ve seen the names of those that have died and school guards on the list of those claimed to have passed the competency
test.”
The labour leader further stated that the credibility and the outcome that the process will lead to cannot stand the competency test of the unions. “The process that will ultimately lead to workers losing their jobs is a core trade union issue. The policy has no human face,’’ he added.
Dismissing the allegation that dead persons’ names are on the list of those claimed to have passed the competency test, a principal member of Kaduna State Universal Basic Education Board, Shehu Uthman, had this to say: ‘‘These are just gimmicks. They are saying it for selfish reasons. There is no way we would habour teachers that cannot perform in our schools. We have innocent children to defend.”
Responding to the call on the Kaduna State government to retrain the teachers in question instead of sacking them, Shehu said, “When the Governor was sworn in, he discovered we have a problem in the education sector. You may not believe, but he has spent colossal sums of money to train teachers. Last year alone, we spent nothing less than N300million to train teachers. We did all we could to train these teachers but to no avail. We cannot continue to habour them.”
Speaking on the fate of the 21,780 teachers, Shehu said they will be given another opportunity to apply. ‘‘Those teachers we asked to go will be given another opportunity to apply. When they sit for our test and they pass the exams, we will call them for interview, and if they scale through, we are going to readmit them, and they will continue from where they stopped. They won’t lose any grade level.’’
As NUT plans to close down schools should el-Rufai fail to rescind his plan, stakeholders are asking: who blinks first?
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