Teachers Sack: Northern Govs Will Emulate Me —El-Rufai
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The Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai has said that other governors of northern states in Nigeria will emulate the recent mass sack of teachers in the state.
Governor El-Rufai said this at the 4th Distinguished Guest Lecture of the University of Medical Science, Ondo town, Ondo State where he was the guest lecturer.
El-Rufai said the decision to sack incompetent teachers was taken by all the northern state governors and not exclusively him.
He said, however, that most of them unfortunately could not carry it out for the fear of losing the next 2019governorship election.
At the lecture titled “Transforming Nigeria’s educational System: Looking back and looking forward”, he said:
“We have different governors’ fora in the country. We also have the Northern Governors Forum where we share experiences.
“I can tell you that many of my colleagues from the northern states told me that what I was doing was right.
“They told me that they had more serious cases in their states, but they couldn’t do anything about the problems.
“So I think after the next election, you will see a lot of the reforms happening because many of the governors will decide to do the same thing.
“It is just that they are not as reckless as I am. We took a collective decision because it was the right thing to do.
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“If you don’t do this, why not walk away from the governor’s seat? What is more important to me is education.
“Many of my colleagues have talked to me in private that they would do the same thing (sack teachers) after the election.”
Speaking further, he said: “I am very grateful to Mr. President. He came out clearly and supported what we did in Kaduna. No professor of education supported us.
“We had to ask ourselves questions repeatedly if we were doing the right thing or not.
“But the moment we started receiving support from top Nigerians, we were convinced that we were on the right track.”
It would be recalled that the Kaduna State Government sacked about 22,000 teachers for incompetency in 2017.
The sack, which attracted much criticism from various quarters in the labour sector, was part of the efforts to reform the education sector in the state.
