JANG SET TO SACK 11,000 TEACHERS “We have 7,000 teachers in the primary schools that are not qualified and another 4,000 that have no business going near our schools at all. The 7,000 were asked to improve on their status but they have failed to do so and we have made up our mind to do away with the 11,000 put together” -Jonah David Jang, Governor, Plateau State on Saturday 15th June, 2013. If our dear Governor desires to sack teachers, he should go ahead, but he should not tell me and good Plateau people that these folks are not qualified, because I know that as unqualified as he may think they are, they laid the foundation for the education of common people like me, in those days when men were men and women fell in love only with gentlemen who went to Ekan Primary School Mangu. If Gov. Jang is interested in denying seasoned and experienced elderly teachers their retirement benefits, pensions and gratuities, he should proceed in the nakedness of his intentions, and should not belabor us with his abracadabriac justification. With the damage he has done to our education, it is rather unfortunate that he would turn around and blame it on these 11,000, alleging they cannot add value to education in the State, when they like the pupils in their custody, are victims of an administration of sustained embargos. As a people today, we are faced with a situation on the Plateau, where we have to come to terms with the truism that history is not false. Isn’t it rather shocking that after six years of neglect, our governor can suggest now that he cares for our education? This is audaciously incredible! So, my Governor, you actually love education? Why was the closure of Plateau State University one of your foremost policies, when you knew you would not add a single block to the structures on ground when reopening the institution many months later? Why are our schools more closed than open under your leadership? Why have we lost more than a session at all levels of our education on your watch? I don’t honestly think the answers to these questions lie in the sacking of some helpless rural teachers, who are trying to survive under the harshest conditions since JD Gomwalk died. So, I do declare in good conscience, that a government that places a curse on employment for almost two tenures lacks the moral justification to sack a single person in the 11,000. Improvement is good, but how can these poor teachers improve their status when the little they earn is barely enough to feed them and cater for their families? How can they improve their status when to improve their emoluments, they had to be threatened with the brutality of death by hunger if they refused to abandon their struggle? While waking from the reality of the impending doom at this nightmarish moment in time, I see that we have to stretch forth our hands to hold history by the helm of its garment, until we are able to effect a change in its course. We have got to find the davidacious fortitude to tell the world and our government that our communities do not have room for 11,000 refugees of insensitivity. If there is a God in heaven, He will arise and safe our people, but if He doesn’t, we will keep hope alive, and we will sing like the Psalmist of old, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 06:24:17 +0000
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