Buhari Backs El-Rufai’s Decision To Sack Teachers

President Muhammadu Buhari has on Monday defended the decision of Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai to sack over 22, 000 teachers, who recently failed the competency test conducted by the state government.

Buhari at the special retreat of the Federal Executive Council on the challenges facing the Education sector in Nigeria said what El-Rufai is doing is to rid Education in the state of rot and decay.

”What El-Rufai is trying to do now is exactly what that man told me about 10 years ago. It is a very serious situation when teachers cannot pass their exams. 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 the most important in this administration.”

Buhari at the meeting which had in attendance, the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, ministers and other key stakeholders said the Council members should come up with workable solutions to solve the problems affecting the education sector.

He criticised the poor quality of teachers in the nation’s institutions of learning, adding that the Kaduna State governor, El-Rufai is trying to correct that in the state.

The President, recalling the period he was a boarding school pupil said that his foundation knowledge was build at the elementary period.

“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. Those days, teachers behave to students like their children.

”If you do well, they will tell you, you did you well. If you don’t, they will never spare the rod and then when I finished, six years in Secondary School then, 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. I joined the army and the army of that time we went through what we went through up to the civil war.”

The President said teachers should be more reformed and impact the students with knowledge.