Buahri Backs El-Rufai To Sack Nearly 30,000 Teachers.

The battle between the Kaduna State Government and the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) has raged on all through this year and it has now gotten to the notice of the Federal Government who is giving their verdict.

At the Federal Executive Council Retreat that was held in Abuja, the President who himself was under fire over educational qualifications during his campaign for the office has given the Governor of Kaduna State the green light to fire the teachers.

He had addressed the issue while speaking on the theme “Education in Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects”, he explained that the situation of having up to 13.2 million children out of school was bad enough, but then using teachers who were incompetent was worse.

The President gave his own story: “To digress a little bit so that you know that I meant what I read.

“Having been an orphan, I still feel that whatever I did in life so far was built by boarding school. For nine years, I was in boarding school, three in primary and six in secondary school.

“In those days, teachers treat their students or children like their own children. If you did well they will tell you, you did well, and if you didn’t do well they never spared the rod.

“When I finished my secondary school, I didn’t work for a day; I refused to work for a day. I left home. I refused to work in the local government, and then I joined the army. And the army of that time we went through all we went through up-to the civil war. And then I listened to one of the Nigerians I respect; he said after his training here in Nigeria and the United States, he went to his alma matta, his primary school to see what he could contribute. I won’t mention his name but when he went, he couldn’t differentiate between the students, the children and the teachers.”

He commended the effort of Nasir El-Rufai.

“And what El-Rufai is trying to do now is exactly what that man told me about 10 years ago. It is a very very serious situation, when teachers cannot pass their exams that they are supposed to teach the children to pass. It is a very tragic situation we are in and this gathering together to me is one of the most important in this administration,” he finished.

This news will be especially devastating to the NUT who must have been looking for a lenient judgment from the Federal Government and it will be a blow to their impending strike action in the State.