THE PRIZE OF HARD WORK
Taraba State is reaping its investments in education, writes Simon Baba
This is the season of the good things for Taraba State. In May this year, Governor Darius Dickson Ishaku was rated among the 10 best performing governors in the area of service delivery in the country by THISDAY newspaper. In fact, the state was number six out of that group of 10. Now, the state has emerged among the top 10 states in the 2017 West African School Certificate Examination ranking that has just been released. This is the second time the state is finishing so impressively in WAEC performance in two consecutive years. Last year, Taraba recorded 67.3 per cent, the highest the state has ever attained in its 27-year history.
These achievements are not accidental occurrences. And it is no surprise that they are happening in the two years under Ishaku’s leadership. They are a product of the new vision and discipline that his administration has deployed in the running of all departments of social services, including education. The more significant aspect of this development in the education sector is the consistency in the annual results since Ishaku became governor. They good results have come back to back in two years. It is a huge credit for the Ishaku administration which has consistently motivated teachers through regular payment of salaries and improvement in the states of the school environments and payment of examination fees for the students.
For a state which had many of its social activities, including educational institutions, disrupted for several years due to communal crises in the past, the results in WAEC performances under the Ishaku administration are a testimony to the commitment of the administration to its rescue agenda. His peace initiative has worked magic in several communities and helped to stabilise economic and social activities including the school system. What these impressive records have confirmed about the state is that the administration has successfully rescued education from the jaws of neglect and decadence of the pre-Ishaku years.
It is also a sign of greater things to come in that sector. The administration’s agenda for the repositioning of education is a huge project and it is still work in progress. For example, government is recruiting 3,000 additional teachers for primary and secondary schools. This will greatly enhance the quality of instruction in the schools and impact positively on students’ overall performances in critical examinations.
On Monday, August 7, 2017, members of the Nigerian Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) stormed Government House, Jalingo, to show appreciation for this and other good things the administration has done for the people of the state. The team led by its chairman, Comrade Naphtali Kefas had all the 16 Local Government Council chairmen on it. They came on a “thank you” visit to Governor Darius Ishaku. Explaining further the mission of the team, Kefas said the visit was an opportunity for members to also apologise to the governor for their initial misunderstanding and resistance to his decision to do a verification of the councils’ payroll. “Now we can understand your reason for the verification. The payroll was highly bloated and was full of ghost workers. We thank you for successfully cleaning it up and for the commencement of payment of salaries to our members”, he said.
The NULGE leader praised Ishaku for restoring sanity to the local government system in the state. “You have done a great job for the state and we have come to pledge our loyalty and support for your administration. You have given hope to retirees by setting up the machinery for them to be paid regularly and we appreciate your efforts.” He said with the regular payment of retirees, workers in the state will no longer be scared about retirement.
He said the union’s leaders were also in Government House to acknowledge the good works the administration has done in all the other sectors in the state. “You turned agriculture around in the most dramatic way, the Green House project and the booming rice farms are evidences of this great turn-around. You have also done several roads and among them are some of the long forgotten ones. You have renovated hospitals and given employment to thousands of our young graduates through the employment opportunities created by your administration and the skills acquisition programmes. We appreciate the on-going recruitment of 3000 teachers”, he said.
In a short remark, Governor Ishaku said the visit of the NULGE officials was one of his happiest moments in government. He said it was the first time people were coming to him to say “thank you” for a job well done. And for this “thank you” to have come from workers who are more used to making demands and issuing threats to their employers, it is something that I value tremendously”, he said. He said experience has shown that most of the times, workers come with demands “and when you meet these demands, they go away quietly, showing no appreciation.”
He told the NULGE leaders that his administration was a listening and caring one and urged workers generally to always opt for dialogue in the pursuit of their demands. “Protests do not solve problems. Dialogue does”, he said. He also reminded labour leaders of the objective of trade unionism which he said is all about attracting benefits for those that they represent and that those benefits can be better achieved through negotiation and dialogue. Baba wrote from Jalingo, Taraba State