This comes after Satees Muniandy claimed the disputed land deal behind the imminent closure of SK Assumption was made while Najib was the education minister.

“Satees should tell the truth. Yes, I was the minister in 1995 but it was the church itself which sold their original land and closed down the school that same year.

“The church then gave up the rights to the school,” he told FMT.

Najib said that following the school’s closure in 1995, its students used the classrooms at SK Jalan Sungai Nyior for 13 years until the present building was constructed in 2008 and its original name restored.

“It was no longer a missionary school and became a government-run school from 1995, so why claim that the current government wants to close down a missionary school when the reasons could be due to a lack of students versus budget?

“But I would like to ask YB Satees how many students were enrolled in that huge three-storey school in 2021 and 2022? Did he ask the real reason for the school’s closure?

“Is it due to low enrolment or a land issue or both? So, why did you claim that the closure is due to its ‘missionary’ status, especially since the church had long ago given up its rights to the school?” he said.

Najib said this was why he urged the education ministry to explain the real reason for the school’s closure as he did not want it to become a racial and religious issue.

“But I cannot understand why Satees wants to turn it into a racial and religious issue,” he said, adding he had nothing against missionary schools.

“I myself went to a missionary school, St John’s Institution, for my primary and secondary education,” he said.

Najib also responded to Satees’ remarks that a lack of students was not a reason to shut SK Assumption as there were other schools with fewer students, like SK Tebing Rebak in Bagan Dato, which only has four students.

SK Assumption has 55 students.

He said there were five other primary schools in Bagan Dalam where SK Assumption was located, including SK Kuala Perai 350m away with about 300 students in a big four-storey building, whereas there was only one school in Kampung Tebing Retak, home to 120 people.

On Satees’ claim that the then Barisan Nasional government had neglected the acquisition of the land and building since 2008, Najib said the Bagan Dalam assemblyman should ask former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

“He was the education minister then,” he said.

He also told Satees to ask the Pakatan Harapan-era education minister as well as Bagan MP Lim Guan Eng why the land issue was not resolved when they were in power.

“In fact, YB Bagan (Lim) never raised this issue (SK Assumption land). If it was an issue then, he could easily have approved the budget to buy the land when he was the finance minister,” he said.

SK Assumption was founded in 1933 by the La Salle Brothers, an order of the Catholic church.