The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, said the practice of giving northern students lower cut-off marks to enable them gain admission into tertiary institutions has made them lazy.
While admitting that northern Nigeria had always been disadvantaged when it comes to education, Governor El-Rufai however noted that students from the region are discouraged from working hard when given differential Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination cut-off marks.
He said the state of insecurity in the state has contributed negatively to this and that the current closure of schools in the state was the major goal of bandits and terrorists, but vowed that they won’t win.
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The governor said this while speaking on Channels TV on Monday.
“The north has always been behind in education, we’ve continuously been the disadvantaged region right from independence even though we’re given preferences, JAMB scores and all that. That has not helped, in fact, it has made our people lazy.
“Against this differential JAMB and FG (Federal Government) scores, I think people should be encouraged to work hard and compete and we are prepared to make our children in Kaduna State to be competitive, not only in the state but globally”, he said.
THE WHISTLER earlier reported that the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) had announced that it would no longer set a general cut off mark for UTME candidates, but would allow individual tertiary institutions to decide benchmarks for their candidates.
Prior to this, JAMB had always fixed general cut-off marks applicable to Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education.
Speaking on the closure of schools in Kaduna, Governor El-Rufai said the state government followed the advice of security experts.
“The schools are closed now because, on the advice of security agencies, they need a couple of months to undertake massive security operations. They are doing that. We are confident that from the next two weeks, we would start the gradual reopening of schools”, he said.
He said students in the rural areas were moved to urban areas in order to ensure their security.
“We have moved many of our students in rural areas that we are not sure we can protect to urban schools, thereby increasing the congestion in urban schools that we can protect.
“The continuous closure of schools is exactly what bandits and Boko Haram want and we are not going to let them win but we must put the safety of our children and teachers first,” the governor noted, adding that the gradual reopening of schools would commence soon”, he said.