Nigeria’s Basic Education Needs Teachers

This reminds me of when we were young, we’d always fight anyone that tells us we’ll become teachers in the future. Why? Because we all recognized how badly teachers were treated then, and the same is still the news. We all heard of how the federal government even struggled to agree to the 30,000-minimum wage for workers – even university lecturers just put an end to their 9-month strike. This is to tell us that the lack of proper care for teachers isn’t only on the basic level, but also transcends to the upper level of the ladder.

You cannot expect ‘future leaders’ to opt for teaching when they can see clearly how teachers are badly treated. Politicians and lawmakers that spend a few hours saying “Hi and Nah” earn more in allowance than teachers who spend 8 hours daily teaching do in salary – this is not fair.

One other reason that might attribute to the lack of teachers is poor funding of the education sector. Imagine just 6.7% of the 2020 national budget was attributed to education, and this is to be shared among 36 states.

According to Mr. David Apeh, Head of Public Relations at Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), he made it known that one of the reasons for the shortage of teachers is the lack of qualified teachers in the country. In their audit, it was recorded that 73% of those teaching public schools are qualified, while only 53% of private school teachers are qualified.

See how important teachers are to providing quality education, UBEC promised to increase funding to all the states across the country. 2020 was a terrible year, considering the challenges faced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic which led to the lockdown of the country.

The secretary of UBEC, Dr. Hamid Bobboyi kindly appealed to every stakeholder in the education sector to work with the federal government in ensuring that the quality of basic education in the country is improved.

Extracted from Vanguard News Nigeria