Nasir El-rufai And The Education Sector

Nasir El-rufai And The Education Sector: Where State of Emergency Created Emergency State Anomalies happen for reasons best known to those behind them. In Kaduna State, two years ago, on October 1st 2015, the Governor declared state of emergency in the State’s Education Sector. 

We all jubilated knowing fully that education sector at state level is critical to development because that’s where our younger generation are bred. 

 Unknown to us and unfortunately to our dear State, the governor proved to the world that he does not mean to declare state of emergency but intended to create emergency state in the state’s education sector. 

 It all started on 18th January 2016 when the governor lunched the ‘scam-like’ school feeding program that costed the State whooping N10b (Ten billion Naira) in 8 months. An amount large enough to revamp physical structures of hundreds of schools. 

This may be termed ‘gross priority misplacement’. To cut the story short, the present situation of our schools is alarming. Let me start with terminal duration of the schools. 

This Session’s First Team have about 12 weeks. But as schools resumed on 18th September 2017, we have the following problems which seems not to be priority of the Governor and his Education Commissioner: 

 1. Presently, 3 weeks after resumption, there are no JSS-1 students due to the state’s failure to conduct common entrance exam. The exam was conducted days ago, Saturday 7th October 2017, and is expected to take another 2 weeks before it’s out. 

 If we add two weeks to the 3 weeks already wasted, our prospective JSS-1 students already missed 5 out of the 12 weeks (which is 42% duration) of this term. 

 2. In the same vein, due to failure of the state to conduct Qualifying (Mock) Exams for SSS-2 students, there are no SSS-3 students in all Public Secondary Schools across the state. 

 While the mock exams is on-going, it is expected to end on 26th October 2017 and will also take another 2 weeks to be out making it about 7 out of the 12 weeks (which is 58% of the term) wasted for our prospective SS-3 students. 

 When you objectively look at the situation, one will be wondering how these prospective JSS-1 & SSS-3 students will manage to gain all they are expected to cover this term. 

 This situation is not only alarming but also carnage to the State’s Education sector looking closely at how government is spending lavishly on other non-priority sectors. 

 The question here is, what does Nasir El-Rufai mean by his fiddly declaration of State of Emergency in the State’s Education Sector with all these catastrophes recorded 2 years after?