Amazed by the public support that welcomed Governor Nasir el-Rufai’s controversial competency test, Kogi State appears to think it would not be a bad idea to execute the same policy. In Kaduna State, public primary school teachers were recently made to write a test designed to test Primary Four pupils. A full two-thirds of the public school teachers, a little fewer than 22,000, were deemed to have scored less than 75 percent, the pass mark. Consequently, Kaduna State was reported to be preparing to sack the teachers if they do not resign as they have been asked to. A stalemate appears to be developing, with no teacher indicating any interest in disengaging from the public service, and the teachers’ union desperately up in arms against both the policy and the government.
A wise government would have waited to see how the educational conflict in Kaduna would be resolved before announcing its desire to ape the idea. But the Kogi Government is neither wise nor patient. Said the Kogi State governor’s director-general on media and publicity, Kingsley Fanwo: “The state government is already tinkering with the idea of testing the competency of public school teachers to ensure only capable hands are engaged to shape the future of our children…Those who scale the test will be exposed to the best training and given the best tools and incentives to make Kogi the number one educational destination in Nigeria.”
Nobody believes Kogi State. They have no reputation for honesty and integrity; and they are almost completely destitute of any knowledge of incentives or educational training and ambition. Such a state could not be relied upon to study other experiments with the depth required of a government, let alone draw the right lessons from them. A state owing its workers, in some instances, for over 20 months, and which had recently executed a dismal, complicated and unending staff verification exercise — as a matter of fact ‘exercises’ because it repeated the process about three times — cannot be trusted to do anything right. It has perfected the art of copying others; but it is never able to copy expertly, nor to modify as the situation and state peculiarities demand. Indeed, it is as well that Mr Fanwo spoke of tinkering with the idea rather than toying with it.
Kogi State is perversely ruled by a youthful bunch that knows nothing about public administration or common sense. Workers drop dead because of hunger caused essentially by non-payment of salaries. No significant developmental projects are ongoing anywhere, and parts of the state have been grossly and brutally neglected. By every sensible definition, Kogi is a failed state governed by a failed government imposed by a party that cares nothing about the quality of those it pushes forward to govern the states. In the case of Kogi, the governor, Yahaya Bello, was not even elected. He is the product of a brazen judicial sleight of hand masterminded by ‘offshore’ party leaders. Not satisfied with punishing the people and workers of the state, the state government now proposes to ‘tinker’ with an atrocious idea to further pile on the agony upon the hapless state.
It is important to imagine what would happen in Kogi State should Kaduna State make an unlikely volte face over the competency test, especially given the political repercussions of sacking that number of teachers, regardless of their gross incompetence. The Kogi governor, however, shows no consideration whatsoever for these ifs. In the opinion of Mr Fanwo, the governor will likely forge ahead in its determined but unrealistic quest for higher educational standard. It will not make sense, but the governor is a restless fellow with the instinct of a young lad. However, instead of approbation, the state is likely to be pilloried in terms that will be both mystifying and numbing.
Mr Bello will of course not get a second term no matter how hard and violently he intrigues for it. But in the interim, he will do as much damage as his vacuous mind can conceive, and inflict as much pain as his callous heart can imagine. Nigerian states do not rise against their incompetent governments. It will be the lot of Kogi to endure the terrible punishment Mr Bello and his youthful and irreverent gang can inflict on them, assured that salvation through the ballot box is around the corner, and the prospect of the brash governor ending in jail indisputable.
Credits: | The Nation
