“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.”
This is the commandment handed down to school principals in the secondary schools by the minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Malam Muhammad Musa Bello when he held a meeting with the managers of all the secondary schools owned by the FCT.
The minister went on: “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 principals that in your schools, 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.”
Represented at the meeting by the FCT Permanent Secretary, Dr. Babatope Ajakaiye, the minister further warned that the FCT Administration will no longer accept excuses of poor infrastructure or inadequate teachers and that school principals must do everything to ensure that this situation is changed.
He expressed surprise that the FCT with the largest concentration of the elite, which should be setting the pace for other states, is now turning out 30 percent success in very critical examinations such as WAEC and NECO.
Muhammad 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 the schools even as he emphasized that principals who persist with this ignoble act would attract heavy sanctions from the FCT Administration.
“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.”
Meanwhile, the FCT Administration has clarified that the recent review of the 2016/2017 academic calendar for primary and post primary schools in the Federal Capital Territory affects only public schools.
It would be recalled that the FCT Administration earlier changed the resumption date from Sunday, 4th September, 2016 for boarding schools and Monday 5th September, 2016 for day schools to Sunday, 18th and Monday 19th September 2016 respectively, due to the Eid-el-Kabir celebrations which is expected to take place in the second week of September.
Accordingly, this addition of two weeks only affects the public schools in the Federal Capital Territory.
The private schools in the Territory are at liberty to maintain their resumption and closing dates as scheduled. Thus, this clarification has become necessary to address this issue. [myad]
