500,000 teachers: Govt misses recruitment target – NUT

What do you consider the challenges faced by teachers in the education sector? The immediate challenges are non-payment of salaries to teachers and the dilapidated infrastructure in schools. A lot of teachers teach in very appalling environments.  We have difficulties in making government see the need to address the problems facing learning environment. The federal […]

What do you consider the challenges faced by teachers in the education sector?
The immediate challenges are non-payment of salaries to teachers and the dilapidated infrastructure in schools. A lot of teachers teach in very appalling environments.  We have difficulties in making government see the need to address the problems facing learning environment.
The federal government hasn’t given basic and secondary school teachers a special salary structure like their counterparts at the tertiary level. The same thing happens to the issue of retirement age, when you go to higher institution they are talking about 65 to 70 but when it comes to primary and secondary schools, it is 60 years.
We’ve been clamouring for the retirement age to be raised to 65; unfortunately we haven’t got response yet.
Also, there is the problem of making policies; the policy makers will not bring you in to advise them appropriately, they will just announce the policy and you will be expected to implement it.
Another serious problem is that Nigerians do not know who is responsible for primary education, because everybody believes it is the local government, but it is not.
In the constitution of Nigeria, the fourth schedule says under the functions of the local councils that the councils shall participate in the provision of primary education, but it is the state that does the provision. The Supreme Court has interpreted it as the responsibility of the state.
It becomes a big problem to us that the elites in the society seem not to even realize the true situation. We have suggested to government that there should be the National Education Labour Relations Council, where government will come out with an omnibus body that will deal with matters that concern education in Nigeria, from primary to tertiary, but our government has not done it.
The other aspect of the lacuna in the system is the absence of a national body that takes care of secondary education. All other sectors in the education system have regulators and luckily for us after the union went on strike in the early 90s, by 1999 former president, Abdulsalami Abubakar enacted a decree for the National Secondary Education Commission, that law is there but it has not been implemented.
We keep saying there is need for the federal government to have a fine grip of what is happening in the secondary school level, it is supposed to be the omnibus man, the lion that is steering the states.  If you want Nigeria education standard to be maintained, you will supervise even in the midst of the concurrent nature of our own education.
 
Teachers in many states have complained about non-payment of salaries.  What is the union doing to address that?
 The government will say ‘no work, no pay’ but they forget the other way also, no pay no work. The motto of the union is service and justice; we provide the service but we need justice, unfortunately, we have never received justice but we will continue to render the services.
The situation is that where the teachers are not paid it is even better for them to stay away from classes and declare strike action and the government will know that these teachers are on strike than to force them to teach.
Teaching is something that comes from the mind, the way you relate to those children is the question of the mind.
The truth of the matter is, it is even the government who should say, if we owe you don’t even come to the school.
 
The states are being blamed for poor education quality at the basic level, what is your take on that?
The bane of the education sector is the unwillingness of the government to tackle education problems totally, because politicians like areas where something will go into their pockets freely and the education sector appears not to be enticing.
Government is bringing down the prestige of teachers by employing unqualified persons. Politicians facilitate the recruitment of thugs, party supporters as teachers.
We also have Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) which is supposed to be regulating that but it appears their hands have been clipped because they cannot go further to deregister those teachers.
The state governments performed very poorly, you rarely see serious renovation of schools except in recent times where government showcases school infrastructures by the major roads and when you get into the hinterlands where you really need those things they are not there.
 
The federal government proposed to employ 500,000 teachers this year. Will that help to address some of the concerns you raised?
It is another area that makes us feel that the federal government is not serious with education. The national policy on education stated clearly that you must be a professional, have at least NCE, which is the minimum teaching qualification, so what business has somebody who has not gone through teachers training institutions in the classroom.
The federal government announced that they want to recruit unemployed graduates and ask them to go and teach, and when the pressure came up, they said they would make them undergo a crash programme. Why do you need to do that? Can you do crash programme for medicine, Law and others.
The areas that you should even give more priority is teaching because once you destroy the child you are also destroying the medical doctor in future or lawyers, everyone will not work well.
We feel that the government is speaking from both sides of the mouth and we have sent our disapproval to that. We opposed a situation where the government will employ people who are not trained as teachers to go and teach.
 You cannot just send someone to be trained for teaching in a few months.  You must attend all teaching courses because it is all encompassing, that is the more reason why when it comes to teaching there is gestation period.
The minimum teaching qualification is NCE which is completed in three years, so whatever you want to do now should be equivalent to it.