A US-based Nigerian professor, Farooq Kperogi, has advised Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, to resign since he has confessed to failing at the job.
Kperogi, who is a Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, said this in a Facebook post on Friday.
He was reacting to Thursday’s comment by Adamu wherein he lamented his inability to resolve several challenges in the sector despite serving as the longest education minister.
Adamu, who spoke at the 66th National Council on Education (NCE) in Abuja, said, “Most of our policies at the federal level pulled children out of the street back to the school, but evidently, the actions of the states’ governments are pushing the children back to the streets. Few days ago, someone called my attention to the fact that I am the longest serving Minister of Education in Nigeria. Sincerely speaking, it never occurred to me and I never cared whether I was the longest or shortest serving minister.
“My worry was that I came to office as Minister of Education seven years ago to tackle the myriad of issues confronting the education system, particularly the issue of out-of-school children. But unfortunately, I failed to achieve all these expectations. For seven years, I was unable to tackle the issue of out-of-school children and several other challenges in the education sector. However, there are so many factors that contributed to that failure, but the key one, probably, has to do with education commissioners in the states.”
Reacting, Kperogi called on the minister to resign.
“Education minister Adamu Adamu, in a moment of unusual candor, has confessed that even though he’s Nigeria’s longest-serving education minister he has failed as a minister.
“But his admission of failure would be more genuine if he also resigns his position. Remaining in his position while admitting that he has failed is indefensibly immoral and dishonorable.
“But can he at least justify remaining a minister by intervening to stem the renewed industrial disharmony that is brewing in public universities only a few weeks after ASUU’s 8-month-old strike has been called off?” he wrote.