Nigerian President has approved the sacking of 21,000 teachers who failed a primary school examination despite strong opposing views from labour unions.
The Kaduna State government conducted an examination for 33,000 teachers as part of its education reform.
The president endorsed the sacking at the opening of a special retreat of the Federal Executive Council on Education, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Monday.
He described the situation as “very, very serious’’ and said “it is bad that teachers cannot pass the exams that they are supposed to teach the children’’, the Daily Nation reports.
“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 a boarding school, three in primary and six in secondary school.
“In those days, teachers treated their students like their own children. If you did well, they told you, you did well, if you didn’t do well, they never spared the rod,” he said.
President Buhari attributed the drastic measures to the rot in the education system saying they were necessary in helping salvage the situation.
He said the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) was committed to all the electoral promises made to revamp the education sector.
According to Buhari, the current statistics of the out of school children stood at 13.2 million, up from the 10 million estimated by the United Nations a few years back.
“We cannot afford to continue lagging behind. Education is our launch-pad to a more successful, more productive and more prosperous future.
“This administration is committed to revitalising our education system and making it more responsive and globally competitive.”
The Kaduna Governor Nasir El Rufa’i was under attacks recently, especially from the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), over the action on the teachers, many of who are secondary school certificate holders.
The mass layoff prompted a protest on November 8.
