Abdulrazaq Mungadi, Gombe
Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has spoken on why most states governors do not invest in Education, leaving the critical sector to decay.
El-Rufai, who was in Gombe on a special visit to the Emir of Gombe, told journalist that education is a generational investment whose result is seen only after years of the investment.
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“It is generational, you don’t see the results immediately until after twenty to thirty years.
“That is why many state governments ignore education, because the results will not be felt straightaway,” he said.
The governor added that the banditry and insurgency being experienced in the country are all products of bad educational policies some 30 year ago.
“The Boko Harams, all are product of bad educational policies. This is what we are trying to prevent in Kaduna State.
“We trying to invest aggressively in education, because education is the ladder that provides social mobility, it is what enlightens people to be united,” the governor said.
“We want to reduce or eliminate views along religious and ethnics lines, and you can only achieve that through education and socialization. We have tried to reinstate the quality of public education back to what it is today.
“Over the years most of our elites have abandoned the public school system, they have sent their children to private primary schools, private secondary schools and private universitie, even abroad. So only children of the poorest go to public schools and they are not getting the type of quality education we got when we went to public schools,” he said.
El-Rufai added that the basic goal for implementing the educational reform policy in Kaduna State was to have the best quality teachers in the best possible environment with the needed tools and equipment, such that the children of the poor will have the same quality of education children of the rich are getting in private schools.
“That is the basic goal of our policy and everything that we have done; from the sacking of 22 thousand unqualified teachers and hiring of 25 thousand new ones, to investment in rebuilding schools to the introduction of school feeding; all are centered on encouraging the poorest people in Kaduna State to send their children to school.
Governor El-Rufai also reveals that they are trying to encourage other governors to look at the areas of educational reform with the view to reestablishing the lost glory of education in the country.