Governor condemns Buhari for supporting El-Rufai’s plan to sack teachers

Governor Ayo Fayose has criticised President Buhari for backing Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s plan to sack over 20,000 teachers.

The Governor said that it was the duty of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) to regulate the teaching profession.

He said “Not minding the state’s inability to pay salaries as and when due, owing to paucity of fund, I will not sack any worker under any guise.”

“Here in Ekiti State, the immediate past APC government used competency test to demote many secondary school principals, vice-principals and primary school headteachers, leading to sudden death of many of them. The government then tried to force the competency test on the teachers but they resisted.

“Today, students in Ekiti State are still being taught by the same teachers that the APC government said were not competent and the students were the ones whose performance gave the state first position in NECO in 2016 and 2017.

“The state also moved from 26 per cent performance in the West African Examination Council’s Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination in 2014 to 36.5 per cent in 2015, 42 per cent in 2016 and 74.86 per cent in 2017,” he added.

Fayose also said “Instead of hiding under competency test to sack teachers, the APC government both at the states and federal governments should come to Ekiti State and learn how we were able to get optimum performance from the same set of teachers that the immediate past APC government in the state labelled incompetent and harassed with competency test.”

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Buhari's take

According to reports, Out of the 33,000 primary school teachers who sat for the examination conducted by the Kaduna state Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), only 11,220 passed the exercise.

President Buhari, while commenting on the issue, when teachers cannot pass the exams they're supposed to administer to their students.

He also stated that it underscores the urgent need for comprehensive national reform.