Reactions have continued to trail the enrollment of Abubakar Al-Siddique, the son of Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, in a public school in the State.
While some have described the action of the Kaduna State governor as a laudable action and urged other state governors to follow suit, some believe it is a normal act.
The Governor had tweeted about the incident, hinging it on his commitment to restructure the educational sector in the state.
Sharing the pictures via twitter, El-Rufai said he had enrolled his son at Kaduna Capital School in order to lead by example and also show his commitment to fixing the educational sector in the state. He tweeted, “Reforming the Education sector in Kaduna is a continuing struggle against decades of neglect.”
Reacting to the development, Mr. Mande Ande Mande, who resides in Kaduna said the actions of the governor was to fulfill his electioneering campaign promises. He said, “I feel Governor El-rufai is simply trying to fulfill one of his campaign promises. If you had followed political events in Kaduna State, you would recall that the Governor promised to enroll his children into public schools if elected.”
Comparing the actions of the governor to that of other public office holders across the country, Mande believes that El-Rufai has done excellently well but considered that it should be a norm by all public office holders. Mande explained that, “Comparatively to other public office holders across the country, I think El-rufai has done something laudable. However, our inclination to compare is one of the greatest disservice to this country. This is something that should be normal if we had responsible leadership.”
Speaking on the state of security in the state and considering the enrolment of the governor’s son in a public school, Mande said, “I think we should be concerned with the general security of pupils, not just the Governor’s son. Kaduna is having her fair share of insecurity that is prevalent in Nigeria. However, this has not impeded pupils from going to school.”
For his part, Publisher bnn.ng, Anthony Daniels has said the action is a good move by governor El-rufai. Daniels buttressed that, “there is always a starting point for everything. Enough of the noise about senior public officers and wealthy men not using public schools, one governor has started it, others should follow suit.”
Speaking on the benefits of the governor’s actions, he said “One of the advantages of such actions is that more funds and qualified teachers will now be directed to the public schools because they don’t want their children to get half-baked education. Growing up those days, public schools were better than private ones. Our parent made efforts to send us to public schools because the private schools were often small and not well staffed. Today it is the opposite. Funds are now heavily invested in private schools because it is now lucrative with high level of extortion.
“Talking about the security of the kids, the government should revert back to emulating private schools in the area of security and put up fierce competition with the private school especially in the area of facilities and security.”