Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal has lamented that the immediate past administration refused to pay examination fees of the students for the West African Examination Council, WAEC, and National Examination Council, NECO, for three years.
Lawal explained that the government was owing the two examination bodies the sum of N3.4 billion Naira which he said resulted in the total collapse of the education sector in the State.
Governor Lawal, who spoke through the State Commissioner for Information and Culture, Hon. Mannir Mu’azu Haidara, explained that the immediate past Government owed WAEC N1.8 billion, while it owed NECO N1.6 billion.
“The students who have completed their secondary school could not further their education as WAEC and NECO refused to release their results for three years.
“But when the present administration came on board, it cleared the debt and assured the examination boards of prompt payment,” he said.
Speaking further, he stated that the administration of Dauda Lawal has reopened the State’s Schools Feeding Agency which was shut down as it could not pay contractors supplying foodstuffs to the students.
According to him, the present administration inherited a decaying system of governance as education, security, economy and many other sectors collapsed.
Continuing, Haidara stressed that when the new administration came on board, it inherited workers’ and pensioners’ four months outstanding salary arrears, which he said Lawal’s administration cleared.