Teachers Sack: NUT faults Buhari endorsement

The Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT, has faulted the Presidential
endorsement for the laying off of about 22,000 teachers in Kaduna
State.

General Secretary of the NUT, Dr. Mike Eneh who spoke to New
Telegraph on Monday in Abuja, noted that rather than layoff
teachers under the guise of having failed a competency test, a
retraining programme ought to have been organized to boost the
quality and efficiency of the teachers in the state.

While stressing that the government of Kaduna State had no right
whatsoever to conduct any form of test for teachers, as such was
the mandate of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria TRCN,
he noted that the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai,
had only ended up embarrassing himself and the state, and have
proven beyond all reasonable doubt, the educational imbalance
between the North and the South.

“It will be unfair if Mr. President listen to the one-sided
story and decide to sack the teachers. If I were Mr. President, I
could have called all parties involved including the stakeholders,
the NUT, the people that set the exams and we dialogue to proffer
solutions to know what to do,” he said.

Eneh who described the competency test and alleged failure as a
lame excuse to cut down cost by reducing the workforce in the state
disclosed that the union was not resting on its oars, but was
joining forces with the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, to address
the situation.

“The supervisory department of Kaduna state education department
in the primary education from their Kaduna state superb is dead.
That is simply what it means otherwise they were just conniving
with the people to collect government money and they were eating
it.

“Our position is that El-Rufai and the government of Kaduna
state have decided to cut down on their workforce. We have learnt
that local government and civil servants are on the line to take
their own exams, if 22, 000 teachers can fail, it then means that
civil servants and the local government workers who do not have the
opportunity of going to school will fail the exams and he will sack
everybody.

We are not laying low; we have several options we are going to
take. The NUT has the backing of NLC, we are going to face him one
on one. Nobody is intimidating him all we are saying is that as a
governor he should give room for dialogue.

“Even in governance we cannot clap for all the governors and say
that they are the best but to tell us that 21,000 teachers fail
exams does not go down well with us. We are disputing it, we are
arguing it and we want to find out how the 21,000 teachers failed.
If we dialogue and we are convinced what he did was real and that
nobody was cheated, we give up,” he added.

At the time of filing this report, the leadership of the Nigeria
Labour Congress was unavailable to react, as they were in the
middle of an intense meeting deliberating on their next move.

The Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT, has faulted the Presidential
endorsement for the laying off of about 22,000 teachers in Kaduna
State.

General Secretary of the NUT, Dr. Mike Eneh who spoke to New
Telegraph on Monday in Abuja, noted that rather than layoff
teachers under the guise of having failed a competency test, a
retraining programme ought to have been organized to boost the
quality and efficiency of the teachers in the state.

While stressing that the government of Kaduna State had no right
whatsoever to conduct any form of test for teachers, as such was
the mandate of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria TRCN,
he noted that the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai,
had only ended up embarrassing himself and the state, and have
proven beyond all reasonable doubt, the educational imbalance
between the North and the South.

“It will be unfair if Mr. President listen to the one-sided
story and decide to sack the teachers. If I were Mr. President, I
could have called all parties involved including the stakeholders,
the NUT, the people that set the exams and we dialogue to proffer
solutions to know what to do,” he said.

Eneh who described the competency test and alleged failure as a
lame excuse to cut down cost by reducing the workforce in the state
disclosed that the union was not resting on its oars, but was
joining forces with the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, to address
the situation.

“The supervisory department of Kaduna state education department
in the primary education from their Kaduna state superb is dead.
That is simply what it means otherwise they were just conniving
with the people to collect government money and they were eating
it.

“Our position is that El-Rufai and the government of Kaduna
state have decided to cut down on their workforce. We have learnt
that local government and civil servants are on the line to take
their own exams, if 22, 000 teachers can fail, it then means that
civil servants and the local government workers who do not have the
opportunity of going to school will fail the exams and he will sack
everybody.

We are not laying low; we have several options we are going to
take. The NUT has the backing of NLC, we are going to face him one
on one. Nobody is intimidating him all we are saying is that as a
governor he should give room for dialogue.

“Even in governance we cannot clap for all the governors and say
that they are the best but to tell us that 21,000 teachers fail
exams does not go down well with us. We are disputing it, we are
arguing it and we want to find out how the 21,000 teachers failed.
If we dialogue and we are convinced what he did was real and that
nobody was cheated, we give up,” he added.

At the time of filing this report, the leadership of the Nigeria
Labour Congress was unavailable to react, as they were in the
middle of an intense meeting deliberating on their next move.