Dutse — Only 20 percent of Jigawa State's 15,000 primary school teachers are qualified, the Commissioner for Education, Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmad Rufa'i, has disclosed.

The commissioner said this while inaugurating the board members of SUBEB in her office, saying that presently Jigawa has about 14,579 teachers for primary schools out of which only 2,950 are qualified while the remaining 11,629 are unqualified.

According to her, no meaningful achievement could be recorded with this trend which makes it imperative for the teachers' to get up and improve themselves or be edged out.

According to Professor Ruqayyatu, it was in realization of the danger inherent in allowing unqualified personnel to man the respective schools that government introduced a manpower development scheme for the teachers with a view to making them acquire the necessary qualifications. She said the ministry had set aside about N400 million for the teacher training programmes at both College of Education Gumel and the National Teacher Institute, (NTI) Kaduna.

While expressing the commitment of the government to reverse the trend within the shortest possible time, the commissioner said any person who is not akin to the new philosophy of manpower development should honourably quit the scene.

She explained that Jigawa had been one of the few states in the federation with an excellent salary package for its teachers, but regrettably the state was leading in terms of poor and unqualified teachers.

In his response, the new Executive Chairman of the Board, Alhaji Sani Abdullahi, who is the immediate past Permanent Secretary of the Education Ministry, promised to work in line with the principles of service delivery.

He equally warned all the unqualified teachers in the payroll of the state government to brace up and make their papers or be shown the way out of the service.

"Ours is a resolve to work for the good of the people of the state. I am therefore calling on all those teachers who are not qualified to, without delay, start the process of improving themselves or be shoved out", said the new Executive Secretary.