No fewer than 233 teachers with fake certificates will be dismissed by the Kaduna State Government, Chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board, Tijjani Abdullahi has said.
The chairman who stated this at a media briefing in Kaduna, the state capital, on Thursday, also insisted that there was no going back in the conduct of competency tests for public school teachers in the state.
Abdullahi noted that as part of the effort of the board to ensure that teachers process the qualification they claimed, it embarked on a certificate verification exercise in April.
According to him, the aim was to ensure that all teachers have the requisite credentials that constitute the basic qualifications for employment as teachers.
He noted that so far, the board verified 451 certificates from 13 institutions, adding that out of the figures, 233 certificates were discovered to be ‘fake’.
Abdullahi said the 233 teachers with the fake certificates would be dismissed from the state workforce and made to face the full weight of the law.
He added that as part of board’s transparency, the names of the 233 teachers with fake certificates would be uploaded on the state government’s website.
The SUBEB boss said, “The Kaduna State Universal Basic Education Board (KADSUBEB) wishes to update you on recent developments in its continuous quest to improve standards in public basic education schools.
“As part of its responsibility to ensure that all teachers actually have the qualifications they presented, the Board launched a certificate verification exercise in April 2021.
“The major objective of this exercise was to ensure that all our teachers have the requisite credentials that constitute the basic qualifications for employment as teachers.
“So far, the Board has verified 451 certificates by contacting the institutions that awarded the certificates. Nine of the 13 institutions contacted have responded, as of today.
“The responses from the institutions show that 233 teachers presented fake certificates. This represents 51% of the 451 certificates on which responses have been received from the awarding institutions. One institution disowned 212 of these 233 fake certificates.”
“The Board will dismiss the 233 teachers who presented these fake certificates, while their files will be forwarded to the Ministry of Justice to initiate prosecution for forgery.”
Meanwhile, the Chairman added that the board would soon commence the conduct of competency tests for public school teachers in the state.
According to him, the test will start as from January 2022 with 12,254 teachers across the state.
He said, “When the Kaduna State Government recruited 25,000 new teachers after the 2017 competency test, it made clear that it will continue to assess its teachers both for their own improvement and for better delivery of learning outcomes for pupils.
“The Board will follow up the competency test with a series of training programmes organised in batches for teachers. This will begin in January 2022 for 12,254 teachers.
“The Board has signed MoUs with the National Teachers Institute, the College of Education, Gidan Waya, and the Federal College of Education, Zaria, to conduct the training exercise.”
Copyright PUNCH.
