Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Sule has revealed that, beyond the shady deals that led to the recent recruitment of teachers, half of the applicants employed were not qualified.
LEADERSHIP recalls that Governor Sule had approved recruiting 1,000 teachers for deployment across secondary schools in the state, but the sacked leadership of the State Teaching Service Board employed over 4,200 teachers instead.
This development led to the suspension of the exercise and the eventual sacking of the leadership after an investigative panel uncovered the shoddy deals surrounding it.
Speaking during the inauguration of the 18 development area administrators in Lafia, the governor disclosed that 50 percent of the over 4,200 teachers illegally employed by the TSC were unqualified.
He said the consultant engaged to conduct screening for all those who were offered employment letters uncovered the revelation concerning the qualifications of those recruited.
“I thank the people of Nasarawa State for their patience during this period. But I am sad to announce to you that despite all the rigorous screening and tests, even lowering the pass mark from 60 to 50 percent, we still don’t have 1000 teachers.
“In order for us to ensure we have the required number, we had to lower the pass mark again in order to employ 1,500 teachers. They will have to undergo a lot of training. Over 50 percent of the people we thought we were using are not qualified to be teachers.
“We cannot afford to, at the level of our standards of education, bring just any kind of person to be a teacher. We will employ more teachers, but they must undergo rigorous exercises to ensure we have the right people to chaperone our education. We want to leave Nasarawa State better than we met it,” he stated.
