By Uche Mbah
The Zamfara state government has revoked the licenses of more than 500 private school proprietors on the ground that they have not satisfied the state educational guidelines for running private schools.
Ibrahim Abdullahi, Commissioner for Education in Zamfara, disclosed this on Tuesday.
News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, reports Abdullahi as saying that a task force will soon be inaugurated to enforce compliance on the closure of the affected schools, adding that the schools would only be allowed to operate if they meet the comprehensive guidelines recently developed by the state government.
“The guidelines will have to be followed and be met by any private school proprietor before the issuance of licence to operate,’’ he said.
He said Bello Matawalle, Governor of Zamfara, met a “poorly-arranged” setting on the operations of private schools, where proprietors only needed to pay a start-up registration fee of N30,000, after which they had freedom to operate outside the control of the state government.
“At the moment, we have a draft bill which we will forward to the house of assembly that will empower the ministry of education to have control over the way the private schools are set up and operated,” Abdullahi said.
He added that the unit under the state’s ministry of education that oversees the operations of private schools had been upgraded as part of efforts to improve efficiency.
