CIPM asks el-Rufai not to sack incompetent teachers

The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) has admonished the Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, not to proceed with the planned sack of 21,780 teachers, who failed the competency test conducted by the state government.

Edo State Chairman of the institute, Mr. James Pamni, made the call at the 2017/2018 public lecture and awards organised by the body in Benin, where the Registrar and Chief Executive of the National Business and Technical Examinations Board, Prof. Ifeoma Isiugo-Abanihe, was honoured.

Pamni said if carried out, the measure will not provide any solution to the issue of competency but further send many family breadwinners into the unemployed cadre.

He urged the state government to adopt a systematic way of recruiting, training and developing her teaching staff.

Pamni, who stated that incompetency was a system problem, said, “To me, there is a better way to address the issue of incompetency. We are in a system and the system has a problem. So, there is a systematic way of solving the problem. The government has not been able to develop the teachers or encourage them to develop themselves.

“Development is a continuous process. So, you cannot wake up overnight and say ‘go’. Yes, something needs to be done; I believe that the quality of teachers is really very poor but it is not only the teachers; even the public servants, it is the same thing.

“These teachers have produced people in the universities now. I think there is a better way. Mass sacking is not the solution at all. It is just going to be like garbage out, garbage in.”

“Let the government come with a strategy for the entire sector, not to single out the teachers. The affected teachers are more than 80 per cent of the workforce. It cannot just work. There is something wrong somewhere. So the government should come with a strategy to develop the teachers.”

“What it would have done is to give them one year to improve themselves and with the government giving them incentives. At the end of the one year, it would now be able to properly assess them,” he added.

Earlier, one of the guest lecturers and Head of Department of Public Administration at the Federal University, Wukari, Taraba State, Prof. Akongbowa Amadasun, who spoke on “Managing Human Resources in an Era of Economic Recovery,” advised organisations to reconcile government economic policies with their long-term labour recruitment and deployment plans.

Amadasun, who was represented by the Dean of Students Affairs at the Western Delta University, Oghara, Dr. Henry Oghoator, also urged them to “develop a strategy for identifying and filling the gap, in terms of labour performance deficit.”