TheCable

Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, says some teachers that were being recruited in the state could not write their acceptance letters.

He said after the state sacked 21,780 teachers that “failed” a competency test it organised, some of the new ones were discovered to be unqualified.

El-Rufai was speaking at a roundtable discussion on governance, organised in Abuja on Thursday.

The decision of the Kaduna state government to sack the teachers had drawn criticism from some Nigerians.

After the sack, the government began a recruitment process of another 25,000 teachers.

But “even some of the new teachers we tried to recruit tried to game the system”, the governor said.

“We gave those that passed letters of appointments and a plain sheet of paper to write a simple letter of acceptance and some could not.

“It was clear they didn’t write the tests themselves.”

He said owing to the “strides” recorded by the state government in the education sector, private schools in Kaduna “are in trouble now.”

“All their teachers have now left to join our government,” he said, adding: “We believe that in five years’ time, private education in Kaduna will be a luxury, rather than a necessity.”

El-Rufai said his administration is determined to “fix the education system” in Kaduna and that “if it will cost us re-election, it is a price we are prepared to pay”.