The FCT Minister, Muhammad Musa Bello has challenged school principals in the FCT to ensure that from next academic session, all secondary schools in the Federal Capital Territory attain 50 percent success in the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council (NECO).
He gave this challenge during a meeting with school principals in the Territory said that the 30 percent success recorded in 2016 WAEC and NECO in FCT schools is no longer acceptable.
Bello who was represented at the meeting by the FCT Permanent Secretary, Dr. Babatope Ajakaiye insisted that that students must achieve at least 50 percent or the principal will be penalized.
The Minister warned that the FCT Administration will no longer accept excuses of poor infrastructure or inadequate teachers; saying that school principals must do everything to ensure that this situation is changed.
He said it is unthinkable that the FCT with the largest concentration of the elite, which should be setting the pace for other states, is now turning out a measly 30 percent success in very critical examinations as WAEC and NECO.
“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,” he stressed.
The Minister added, “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 a principal that in your school, 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.”
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 these schools; emphasizing that principals who persist with this ignoble act would also attract heavy sanctions from the FCT Administration.
His words: “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.”
