Minister bans grazing in FCT, asks heads of schools with poor results to resign

Minister bans grazing in FCT, asks heads of schools with poor results to resign

​Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Muhammad Musa

Bello, has directed the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB)

and the FCT Task Team on Environment to get rid of herdsmen

involved in grazing.

Describing the situation as “buzzard”, the minister equally directed

the two agencies to stop hawkers selling on pedestrian bridges.

The directives came as the minister ordered any principal of

government schools in Abuja who fails to achieve 50 percent success

in the 2017 WASSCE and NECO exams should honourably resign or risk

being sacked.

Speaking at a meeting with school principals in the territory, Bello

said that the 30 percent success recorded in the 2016 WAEC and NECO

in FCT schools was no longer acceptable.

Malam Bello who was represented at the meeting by the FCT

Permanent Secretary, Dr. Babatope Ajakaiye insisted that that

students must achieve at least 50 percent or the principal will be

penalized.

The Minister warned that the FCT Administration will no longer accept

excuses of poor infrastructure or inadequate teachers; saying that

school principals must do everything to ensure that this situation is

changed.

He said it is unthinkable that the FCT with the largest concentration

of the elite, which should be setting the pace for other states, is now

turning out a measly 30 percent success in very critical examinations

as WAEC and NECO.
“The mandate I will give you that goes with sanction; for this new

session, every principal must be determined that for WAEC and NECO

in 2017, any principal that does not achieve 50 percent success should

just quietly leave that school because the principal is going to be

removed.

“If you don’t achieve 50 percent success in WAEC and NECO 2017, you

are no longer fit to be a principal in FCT and I mean it. That is the

minimum that we want for every school and you must work towards

it,” he stressed.

The Minister added, “We want the success rate to change. That is

very important. We cannot be gathering students and at the end of

their final year, all they will have is three credits. I don’t know

whether you are proud as a principal that in your school, the success

rate is five percent.

“I want principals that will be determined to say in my school, things

must change. Infrastructure or no infrastructure, resources or no

resources, I want to put myself as a sacrifice and change things.

That is what I want to do before I leave the service. I want to be

known to have done something good for Nigeria.”

Malam Bello also warned principals to desist from charging illegal fees

of any sort when provisions have already been made through the FCT

Secondary Education Board to run these schools; emphasizing that

principals who continue with this ignoble act would also attract heavy

sanctions from the FCT Administration.

His words: “My mission is not to come and make you sad; but the

situation is bad and you know it and we are ready to tackle it. But

you must be up and doing too and that is why I said I must call all

the principals and talk to you to do the right things. That is what this

Administration is about.

“We are ready to put the right things in place. We are ready to work

for Nigeria. But we want people that will join us to do this. That is

why when you come to FCT today, it is not business as usual and we

want to send that message down to our institutions.”