By Etse Kassim, Abuja
Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has warned teachers in state against identifying with the indefinite strike declared by the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT).
El-Rufai, in a post on his official twitter handle, @GovKaduna, on Monday morning, said he would not hesitate to wield the big stick by sacking from the state public service any teacher that decide to join the strike.
While saying that the strike is targeting at denying children of the poor from acquiring good education, the former minister of the Federal Capital Territory said no amount of blackmail would lead to the jettison of ongoing reforms in the state’s education sector.
“The children of the poor are the ones that attend public primary schools in Kaduna. We owe them a decent standard of education, and we shall provide it. Any public school teacher who wishes to join NUT’s indefinite strike risks dismissal from service. We can’t be blackmailed,” he said.
The Kaduna State Wing of NUT had last week directed its member to commence indefinite strike on Monday, Jan. 8, 2018 over the sack of 21,780 public primary school teachers in the state.
The teachers were sacked following an alleged woeful performance in a competency test organised by the state government in June 2017.
The affected teachers, who have continued to cry foul over the exercise, had earlier dragged the Kaduna State government to the National Industrial Court where they secured a favourable order but the state government began issuing sack letters to them after the Christmas and New Year holidays
