In Vindication of Sule Lamido and EL-rufa’i, by Saifullahi Attahir Wurno

In 1984, during the second term of Former US President Bill Clinton while Governor of Arkansas State. He was alarmed by a damning report of decline in educational standard in Arkansas. He therefore constituted a committee headed by his Wife Hillary Clinton to go round the state and come up with resolutions on how to rescue the State Educational sector.

He introduced robust proposals including; more time for academic works, mobilize more funds, increase in school year, special opportunities for gifted children, maximum size of twenty pupils per class up to third grade, more recruitment of Mathematics, History, and Science teachers, among others.

The most controversial proposal was to require all teachers and administrators to take and pass the National Teacher Examination.

Even in the US this proposal was met with backlash by interest groups and misinformed teachers that the Governor was trying to hijack their means of livelihood. But in reality there is no way a reform in education can be successfully achieved without a look at the guardian of that knowledge. Teachers are the backbone, no matter how beautiful the school building, how small the number of students per class, how good the curricular, if the person given the knowledge is not well baked, problem would continue to arose.

In President Bill Clinton case, he recommended that teachers who failed be given free tuition to take regular courses and be able to take the test as many times as possible until certified to be able to teach.

This same scenario happens during the tenure of two visionary Governors in Northern Nigeria. Former Jigawa State Governor, Alh Sule Lamido uses the same strategy to bring a massive positive impact in the State education that was then on life support. I could count the number of Primary School Teachers I personally knew that were given opportunity to go back to College of Education (COE) Gumel to obtained NCE Certificate fully funded by the state.

In the case of former Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir Elrufa’i, we could remember there was a giant effort he have tried to impose in order to rescue the educational sector in Kaduna, including massive purge of school teachers unable to pass their Aptitude test. The Former Governor was met with heavy force of resentment, protest , including mass media campaign that he was trying to simply retrench workers from their source of livelihood.

These three cases were almost similar, although different States, different personalities, at different times, and almost different approaches. But History would judge…

Wurno wrote from Federal University Dutse.
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