Educational disadvantage: Regional classification makes Northern students lazy ― Gov El-Rufai

The Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam, Nasir El-Rufai, has said that he is against the classification of the Northern region as being educationally disadvantaged.

He said the categorisation which led to some preferential treatment of low scores, for Northern students into the unity school’s and federal institutions has made the region lazy.

El-Rufai said this on a morning programme of Channels Television, monitored by our correspondent.

The governor who said he has become a state governor, largely due to the quality of education he got from public school, maintained that the region must rise up and become competitive, both locally and internationally.

He said the classifications and their attendant preferential treatment has not helped the region but diminish her competitive strength.

He said: “Now, the north has always been with the idea of continuous education disadvantaged region, right from independence. Even though we have been given preferences on Joint Admission and Matriculation Board scores and all that.

“That has not helped, in fact, it has made our people lazy, so I am against those differentials in Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and differential in Computer Based Test (CBT) scores.

“I think people should be encouraged to work harder and compete, and we in Kaduna State are preparing our children to be competitive not only in Nigeria but globally,” the governor stated.

He maintained that the best investment any state can make for her future would be in education, thus, the commitment of his administration to education in Kaduna State.

He said the determination to boost the quality of education in Kaduna State, informed the decision of the administration to purge the educational system for the revival of quality education and training of the teaching workforce to measure up with the expected minimum standard.

El-Rufai said the plan of the bandits and terrorists, to stop education in the state will not work, as the administration has taken measures to allow education to continue, with certain inconvenience to the students’ population and the school system.

He maintained the bandits will not have the joy of seeing schools closed down in Kaduna State.

His words: “Education is the most important asset, you invest in any child, I am the product of education; I am not the son of anybody but today I am a governor because I got educated in public school.

“This is why we are very focused on ensuring the revival of the quality of education and we have invested significantly in education in the last few years.

“We have taken the unprecedented step of sacking 22,000, teachers and added, 25,000 qualified, teachers improve the quality of education and we are aggressively investing there.

“We are giving them the best possible education. We are investing heavily in them and we are investing heavily in teacher development too.

“The schools are closed now because, on the advice of the security agency, they need a couple of months to undertake massive security operations.

“They are doing that. We are confident like from the next two weeks, we should start gradually to open schools. We have moved many of our boarding students to rural areas that we are not sure we can protect to urban schools.

“Thereby increasing the congestion in urban schools that we know, we can protect. They have been taking their exams.

“But initially she (commissioner for education) just wrote a proposal for the gradual re-opening of our schools.

“We know that education is the most important thing that we have to do. And we are not going backwards, the continuous closure of schools is exactly what the bandits and Boko Haram want and we are not going to let them.

“We must put the safety of teachers and our children first and we are working on that,” El-Rufai said.

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