The Senate has resolved that Sen. Mohammed Ndume ( APC ) should resume sitting on Wednesday Nov. 15, since he had served out his suspension of 90 legislative days.
The decision was reached after a closed-door meeting by the Senate on Tuesday before its plenary.
Sen. Ike Ekweremadu, Deputy President of the Senate, who presided over the plenary, said Ndume had served out his suspension of 90 legislative days, without prejudice to the current court process.
The Senate had, on March 29, suspended former Senate Leader Mohammed Ndume over his petition calling for investigation into the allegation that Sen. Dino Melaye, did not obtain first degree at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State.
The university authorities later came out and declared that Melaye, APC – Kogi West, passed out with a degree at the institution.
The suspension order followed the recommendation of the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, which investigated the allegation.
The Chairman of the Committee, Sen. Sam Anyanwu, submitted his committee’s report, which recommended that “the Senate should suspend Ndume for bringing Sen. Dino Melaye, his colleagues and the institution of the Senate to unbearable disrepute.
“This is even at a time of our national life, when caution, patriotism, careful consideration and due diligence should be our watch words.
“The suspension is with effect from March 29, 2017 to last for six months.
“After having been properly cleared of any wrong doings by the findings of the committee, Sen. Dino Melaye has been cleared of the allegations made against him and exonerated.”
Anyanwu had said that the recommendation was signed by seven members of the committee.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday in Abuja endorsed the ongoing primary school education reforms embarked upon by the Kaduna state government.
The President made this known when he declared open a special retreat of the Federal Executive Council on Education, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
It would be recalled that the administration of Gov. Nasir El Rufai came under attacks, recently, especially from the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) over plans by the governor to sack at least 21, 780 primary school teachers, who could not pass a competency test.
The development which did not go down well with the leadership of the NLC prompted a protest on Nov. 8 over what it described as `obnoxious plan’ by the state government to sack the teachers.
However, Buhari while decrying the rot in the sector, said Nigeria could not progress beyond the level and standard of its current educational system.
“To digress a little bit so that you know that I meant what I read.
“Having been an orphan, I still feel that whatever I did in life so far was built by boarding school. For nine years I was in boarding school, three in primary and six in secondary school.
“In those days, teachers treat their students or children like their own children. If you did well they will tell you, you did well, if you don’t do well they never spared the rod.
“When I finished my secondary school, I didn’t work for a day, I refused to work for a day, I left home, I refused to work in the local government, and then I joined the army. And the army of that time we went through all we went through up-to the civil war.
“And then I listened to one of the Nigerians I respect, he said after his training here in Nigeria and the United States, he went to his alma-mater, his primary school to see what he could contribute.
“I won’t mention his name but when he went, he couldn’t differentiate between the students, the children and the teachers.
Buhari’s voice on El Rufai
“And what El-Rufai is trying to do now is exactly what that man told me about 10 years ago. It is a very, very serious situation, when teachers cannot pass their exams that they are supposed to teach the children to pass.
“It is a very tragic situation we are in and this our gathering together to me is one of the most important in this administration.”
Buhari said with the rot in the education sector, drastic measures had become necessary to salvage the situation.
According to him, the state of education in Nigeria calls for a serious concern, saying that stakeholders should not feign ignorance that the quality of education in Nigeria has dropped and would require greater attention and improvement.
He said the All Progressive Congress (APC) which he rode on to become President was committed to all the electoral promises made to revamp the education sector.
He also revealed that current statistics of out of school children stood at 13.2 million up from the 10 million estimated by the United Nations few years back.
“We cannot afford to continue lagging behind. Education is our launch-pad to a more successful, more productive and more prosperous future.
“This administration is committed to revitalising our education system and making it more responsive and globally competitive.”
He commended the Ministry of Education for setting the stage for this national conversation that aimed at refocusing the education sector.
The president expressed the hope that the retreat would not only overcome the numerous challenges facing the nation’s education sector, but also to strengthen the Ministerial Strategic Plan that had already been developed by the ministry.
He said: “The significance of this summit is obvious. We cannot progress beyond the level and standard of our education.
“Today, it is those who acquire the most qualitative education, equipped with requisite skills and training, and empowered with practical knowhow that are leading the rest.
“Education upgrades the living standard of citizens and enables people to become better and more productive citizens. It is a human right that creates a safe, healthy and prosperous society.
“These efforts are justifiable only to the extent that schooling is effective in promoting the realization of national objectives, attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Education For All (EFA) by 2030.
“These targets are, happily, in harmony with the manifesto and the CHANGE agenda of our Party, the All Progressive Congress (APC).’’
Buhari said his administration was determined to turnaround the sector for the better, noting that already the government was making appreciable progress in this respect.
He, therefore, challenged participants of the retreat to come out with strategies that would address the challenges of basic and secondary education, teacher training and professional development; technical and vocational education.
“The summit must work to enhance quality in, and access to, higher education and other challenges in the sector that will debar us from attaining the SDGs and be among the top 20 economies in the world,’’
In his remarks, the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, advocated declaration of state of emergency in education so as to achieve the desired goals in the sector.
He stressed the need to carry the universities and other tertiary institutions along while driving the nation’s national development objectives.
“Mr President, to achieve the desired change that education needs, there is need for improved funding and a measure of political will in national governance,’’ he said.
The Retreat, with the theme; “Education Sector in Nigeria Challenges and Prospects”, has Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, cabinet ministers, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Presidential aides, heads of agencies and parastatals under the Ministry of Education as participants.
The Kaduna State chapter of All Farmers Association of Nigeria ( AFAN ) on Monday applauded President Muhammadu Buhari for the increased allocation to agriculture in the 2018 budget proposal.
The state AFAN Chairman, Alhaji Nuhu Aminu, conveyed the commendation in an interview in Zaria.
“As a farmers’ association, we ought to appreciate President Buhari for increasing budgetary allocation to the agriculture sector in 2018; the figure is more than what was allocated to the sector this year.
“However, we plead with the Buhari-administration to sustain its efforts to ensure the country’s food security and accomplish its economic diversification derive.
“If the government really wants to diversify the economy; then, there is every need to prioritise agriculture in terms of increased funding,’’ he said.
He said that adequate allocation of resources to the sector would facilitate plans to diversify the national economy via agriculture.
The Federal Government allocated N118.98 billion to agriculture in the proposed 2018 budget, as against the N92 billion it allocated to the sector in 2017.
Aminu said: “This indicates an increase of about N26.98 billion; this is of course commendable and we pray for consistent increase annually.
“We hope all the necessary farm inputs will be supplied to farmers before the onset of the next rainy season to further boost the farmers’ morale.’’
The AFAN chairman, however, urged the government to develop the solid minerals and tourism sectors so as to boost its efforts to diversify the country’s economy.
“Almost all the states of the federation have one mineral resource or the other in commercial quantities that have yet to be exploited.
“In view of this, we want to appeal to the government to collaborate with foreign firms in its plans to exploit these minerals to facilitate national development,’’ he said.
SIR: Senator Shehu Sani’s criticism of Nasir El-Rufai’s decision on sacking those far-below-average teachers in Kaduna State is highly condemnable.
Every profession that deals with life directly should not be taken with levity. And teaching is one of those professions.
Can Senator Shehu Sani allow any of those teachers to take his children in a private home lesson?
This is not a topic to play politics with.
I would have agreed with his criticism if it is on the fact that the state government committed recruitment error in the first place by employing such class of people, as most of them got employed through the man-know-man syndrome vampire rampaging in our society.
There are lots of brains wasting in the labour market today for the future of the country to be left to academic mediocres.
Sacking them from education sector is a good thing. But they should be given an alternative to feed their women and children lest they get recruited by men of the underworld in the region, leveraging on their idle hands.
Governor El-Rufai should consider replacing them in the state’s farming sector which will help the economy of Kaduna State in return.
They are not a waste. But not just fit for this particular field. What never got spoilt in a day cannot be repaired in just a day.
However, this is a step in a right direction from Governor El-Rufai.
The Kaduna State House of Assembly has raised a seven-man committee, led by Deputy Majority Leader Idris Abduwahab, to investigate teachers’ grievances and proffer ideas to improve education.
The committee is to submit its report this week, he added.
The Assembly lamented last week’s attack on its officers and the complex by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), in which property worth millions of naira were destroyed.
The NLC, last week, protested alleged plans by the government to sack 21,780 primary school teachers, who failed a competency test. The protest was led by NLC’s President Ayuba Wabba.
The Chairman, House Committee on Information and Home Affairs, Nuhu Goroh Shadalafia and Chairman, House Committee on Establishment Hassan Abdulkadir, were allegedly attacked.
According to Shadalafia, the lawmakers were almost lynched by the protesters who broke the glass wall of the Assembly’s main office, pursued them and vandalised cars and other property.
The lawmaker said none of them has received a petition or complaint from their constituency on the planned sack. He urged the teachers and workers to follow laid down rules on protest.
“Nobody has been given three months’ notice; nobody has been stopped from going to school; nobody has been asked to pack out of their quarters. The House is taking note of the damaged facility, and would report to the government.
“I have formally written a letter of complaint on what transpired in the leadership of the House and government would decide what to do,” Shadalafia stated.
Mr Hassan Hyat, former aviation minister and PDP Chairman in Kaduna State, has cautioned the Kaduna government against sacking 22,000 primary school teachers said to have failed a competence test.
“Sacking 22,000 teachers in one swoop will create chaos in the entire educational system of the state; government’s insistence on doing that is wrong-headed,” Hyat told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Jos.
NAN reports that the state government has begun the recruitment of 25,000 teachers to replace 22,000 others that failed a competence test it carried out recently.
Gov. Nasir El-Rufai has declared that the decision to sack them was based on government’s commitment to entrenching quality, arguing that most of those in the system were not competent and lacked basic teaching requirements.
But Hyat, who declared government’s position as “brash and too hasty”, said that government had no moral right to sack teachers it had never trained to improve their quality.
“Teachers require constant training and retraining to meet rising and changing demands, but there is no record to show that Kaduna State primary school teachers were ever trained.
“A lot of them have not been promoted for decades, while some do not receive salaries regularly. That has affected morale and should worry government. Sacking them will further destroy an already bad system,” he said.
Hyat also faulted the process through which the competence test was conducted.
“The integrity of the process is still being questioned. Some people have suggested that government officials that conducted the test may have been instructed on what to do.
“I feel that the exercise would have been more credible if it was conducted by the National Teachers Institute (NTI) and supervised by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), to ensure fairness to the teachers,” he said.
The PDP chairman said that government should have taken advantage of the presence of NTI in Kaduna to train teachers found to be incompetent, so as to improve their capacities.
“Those said to be incompetent should be trained and not sacked because the new ones being recruited are products of those being sacked.
“Government should have carried out a thorough assessment to determine the kind of training required by each teacher.
“Efforts should have also been made to help those with deficiencies because there is provision for such in-service courses during holidays. A massive sack of teachers will create a huge imbalance in the system,” he opined.
The former minister also advised government to investigate the allegations that names of dead and retired teachers were included in the list of those said to have passed the test.
“The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) has said that retired and dead teachers, as well as messengers and security personnel were among those that passed the teachers’ test.
“Government should dig into that allegation because the NUT mentioned names of specific schools in Zaria and Igabi. Government should investigate further to ascertain the truth so as not to ridicule itself,” he said.
The Nigerian Union of Teachers, NUT, have condemned the plan by Kaduna state government to sack over 21,000 teachers for failing a competency test conducted in the state for Teachers.
National President of the Union, Michael Alogba Olukoya stated this in Abakaliki, the Ebonyi state capital after the National Executive Council meeting of the Union on Friday.
The Union in rejecting the competency test said that, not only did the test not pass the test and measurement standard, but also it was illegal and unconstitutional.
“The Nigerian Union of Teachers totally condemn the decision by Kaduna State Government to sack over 21,000 teachers from its employment over purported incompetence based on an unstructured competency test. The Union strongly rejects in its entirety the purpose, intent, process and the outcome of the exercise and hereby call for the immediate cancellation of the results of the competency test”
“It is common knowledge that teaching is a profession regulated by a statutory and competent body(TRCN) which is saddled with the responsibility of administering test and the registration of Teachers. To do anything otherwise by the state government in this regard is an infringement on the profession and the extant laws of the land”’
Mr Olukoya expressed his disappointed at the undemocratic actions of the state governor, Nassir El Ruffai who it alleged have refused to heed the numerous calls by the Union and other organisations to soft pedal on the matter and toe the part of dialogue.
“Teachers are democrats, Kaduna state government should respect the rule of law. They don’t have to wake up from comfort of their room and administer question for teachers in the name of interviews, it is never done. Whatever we have to do, let it be in the rule of law, we should do things that are legal. Anybody could call dog bad name because you want to hang it. The government of Kaduna has made up their minds to embarrass the teachers, to disgrace the teachers”.
“There are rules that govern tense and measurements; measurement is a course
of its own in education. When you are not a professional you are administering questions for teachers that are professionals, it is never done. The test that is being administered by Kaduna state government has not passed tense and measurement questions, there are not standard
questions”.
“Let me say this without being the modest. Governor El’ Rufai is one of the people that are outspoken among the governors today. But when it comes to democratic traits, we are disappointed. We have written him even before now. Nigeria Labour Congress has written
him. There is no organization that has not written to Governor El’Rufai but here you are. And we now begin to look at his antecedents. Even if you want to bring a change, it has to follow
procedure and what we are saying is that Governor Rufai has been written but he has not replied us”.
The Union vowed to vehemently resist the planned mass sack of teachers of the Kaduna state government.
“The Union wishes to reiterate its stand to mobilize any attempt to sack teachers based on any illegal process. We hereby, strongly advise Kaduna state Government to focus on organizing the necessary training and re-training of teachers through the relevant training facilities as it is incumbent upon the government to improve on the quality of teachers and school administration for enhanced productivity”.
The Teachers also gave an ultimatum to states owing Teachers salaries to clear them before end of the year.
“The Union totally condemn the inhuman treatment of teachers as is manifested in the unpaid arrears of salaries/pensions to teachers in Kogi, Benue and many other states ranging from 2-22 months, thus putting the teaming teachers in these states permanently in penury”.
“The Union has decided against the background of all these unhealthy and unacceptable developments that enough is enough. There is no more time for rhetorics. The time is now for teachers to take their destiny into their hands to salvage the deteriorating condition that they have been forced into”.
“The National Executive Council of the Union has therefore resolved that the governments of all the affected states owing salaries and pensions of teachers should offset such debts before the end of the year 2017, failing which the union will be left with no other option than to shut down schools in all the affected states” .
Alhaji Abdullahi Muktar, the Sole Administrator of Kauru Local Government in Kaduna State has warned people of the area against eating bush meat in view of the danger of monkey pox disease.
He gave the warning during a meeting with unions of hunters and butchers in the area in his office at Kauru Local Government Secretariat on Friday.
Muktar said the call became necessary in view of the dangers associated with monkey pox disease, which remained a threat to the country.
The administrator said “let me use this medium to call on our people to avoid eating bush meat to guard themselves against the dreaded disease.
“According to experts, the disease is as a result of intake of bush meat, hence the need to completely avoid it for the sake of our health.”
He said government would not fold its arms and allow people to fall victims of the disease.
Responding, a hunter, Malam Abdullahi Kauru, applauded the administrator’s efforts toward ensuring good health in the area.
He advised people to avoid any form of interaction with monkeys and assured the administrator of their support toward tackling the problem.
The Anambra State Indigenes Welfare Association, Kaduna Branch, has advised people of Anambra to go out en masse and vote the candidate of their choice in the Nov. 18 governorship election.
The President General, Chief Humphrey Okolie, gave the advice in an interview in Kaduna on Friday.
Okolie was speaking against the backdrop of calls by some agitators, particularly the Indigenous People of Biafra, urging people in Anambra to boycott the election.
“Let them not allow themselves to be deceived; on that day, let everybody go out and vote.
“Go and vote for the right candidate; don’t sell your vote; don’t vote by sentiment; don’t vote along party lines – whether party A or party B, but vote the person you believe can perform and deliver Anambra state.’’
The president general added that Anambra residents should vote during the election in order to avoid a vacuum of leadership.
“How can they say election will not hold? Election must hold.
“If they boycott election and the tenure of the incumbent governor elapses what happens?
“Does the state stay like that without a governor in a democracy?
“No state will function effectively without a substantive governor or administrator to see to the affairs of the state.’’
Similarly, the Biafra Nations Youth League leader, Princewill Obuka said the group had no plans to interfere in the exercise, “as we recognize the people’s right to vote or boycott”.
The Kaduna State High court presided by Justice Esther Lolo today discharged and acquitted members of the Islamic Movement standing trial for protest in Kaduna following the brutal Zaria massacre of December 2015.
Delivering judgement in the “no case” submission put in by the defense lawyers in the matter, Justice Lolo absolved them of all the five-count charges brought against them. In upholding the no case submission, Justice Esther Lolo ruled in favor of the 10 members of the Islamic Movement who were arraigned before her in 2016 for the alleged offences of Criminal Conspiracy, Unlawful Assembly, Rioting, Disturbance of Public Peace and Causing Grievous Hurt.
At the last sitting of the court, when the matter came up in July 2017 after all the prosecution witnesses had testified and the prosecution had closed its case, Mr. Maxwell Kyon Esq. who led Ummishetu Shehu Esq. and Martins Joseph Esq. addressed the Court on a no case submission wherein he urged the Court to find that the prosecution had failed to establish a prima facie case against the defendants requiring them to enter a defence in the matter.
According to him, the prosecution had failed to prove the essential ingredients of the offences alleged to have been committed. He urged the court to discharge the accused persons and acquit them of the offences for which they were standing trial.
Mr. Isiaka Abdullahi Deputy Director of Public Prosecution in his response urged the Court to find that at this stage of the trial all the court was called upon to do was to decide whether or not a prima facie case had been made out against the defendants for which they would be required to enter their defence.
He argued that the Prosecution through the witnesses it called had established a prima facie case against the defendants. He hence prayed the court to discountenance the no case submission made on defendants’ behalf and call upon the defendants to enter their defence.
In the ruling delivered by her lordship, Justice Esther Lolo on the 9th of November 2017, the trial judge upheld the no case submission argued by Mr. Kyon for the defendants and discharged and acquitted the defendants in respect of all the offences for which they stood trial.
Her lordship held that the entire evidence of the Prosecution was not direct as it failed to point to any of the defendants as being one of the perpetrators of any of the offences for which the defendants stood trial.
By this judgement, the defendants are not only free men but have been absolved of any culpability in the commission of any of the offences for which they stood trial.
