Friday, January 10, 2025 - Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Sule has revealed that approximately 80 percent of the illegally recruited secondary school teachers in the state are unable to write an acceptance letter.
He
made this statement during a meeting with a coalition of Christian
denominations under the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) at the
Government House.
Governor
Sule firmly rejected the request made by CAN’s Nasarawa State Chairman, the
Very Reverend Dr. Sunday Emma, to absorb the illegally recruited teachers,
emphasizing that most of them lacked the necessary qualifications for teaching.
“You are
asking me to absorb them. Reverend, look at it two ways. I am not saying that I
want to cause some people problems. I was told some of these people who paid
money are not even qualified to teach. I was told some of them have given as
much as 700, 600 thousand naira. These are people who would be paid less than
100,000. I was told 80 percent of them could not even write acceptance letters.
If you are the Governor Sir, and you are being told all these. If we are
helping them, we are not helping our educational system. That means we can
completely forget about our desire to reform the educational system,” he said.
The
governor explained that upon assuming office in 2019, he commissioned education
experts to conduct a baseline survey of schools across the state. The report
highlighted the deplorable condition of the educational sector and the urgent
need for qualified teachers among other reforms.
“They
came back and said they needed buildings, we have done that, they needed
curriculum, we have done that, amongst others. They also said we needed
teachers. They said let us start with 1000 teachers. So we approved the
employment of 1000 teachers,” he stated.
However,
Governor Sule disclosed that the Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC), which he
recently suspended, had exceeded the approved number by employing over 1000
additional teachers without authorization.
“They
brought to me among the 1000, 50 slots because they know there are a lot of
people that would approach me to ask for slots. I said no, don’t give me any
fifty. Go ahead and employ all of them based on merit. I don’t even have a
single slot. The reason is that our educational system in the state is grossly
decayed and we need to bring it up. If we don’t have qualified teachers if we
employ teachers based on this-one-knows-this-one, we may not have the kind of
good teachers that we are looking for,” he said.
Governor
Sule also criticized the reluctance of many of the recruited teachers to work
in rural areas, choosing instead to remain in urban centers.
“You
cannot bring people who cannot teach, who will refuse to go to the villages
where we need teachers, choosing to remain in the cities. They have to remain
in Lafia, Akwanga, Keffi, Karu. Some of them don’t even want to go to Toto to
talk less of Gudi. These are the problems we are facing."
He
stressed the importance of maintaining educational standards and ensuring that
only qualified teachers are employed, stating, “I don’t want you to feel that
you have pleaded with me, and I have refused to help. In reality, I don’t have
any problem helping whomever, but I don’t want to bastardize our education
system.”
The
governor announced plans to hold a fresh interview process for all the
recruited teachers, including the initially approved 1000, to ensure that only
the most qualified candidates would be retained.
“Let our
selection of competent teachers come from there so that they can be given equal
opportunity. This time around, we will not allow these types of people to
engage them. We cannot get it right if we fail to do the right thing. My dream
is to get it right in Nasarawa State. That is the dream of my colleague. But we
can’t get it right except if we are honest to ourselves,” he concluded.
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