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.”
