BLACK COCKTALE

NIGERIA needs to recruit 200,000 qualified teachers if the country is to meet the Universal Basic Education For All goal by 2015!
Although it came at a most auspicious time, when the abysmally poor results of the Universal Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) were released, sign-posting the dire straits in which the nation’s education is, this verdict by the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) certainly understates Nigeria’s problem in education and how to fix it.

First, for the deplorable state of primary school education in the country, this figure is a huge underestimation. Secondly, in the ranking of professional aspirations of many people, especially of young Nigerians, a career as a primary school teacher is not one of the most attractive. Where, then, would the teachers come from?
According to the report titled “Global Demand for Primary Teachers – 2012 Update: Projections to Reach Universal Primary Education By 2015”, made available by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), Nigeria falls into the category of 114 countries that would need to create 1.7 million new teaching positions in order to accommodate the growing demand for primary education. This is in addition to the recruitment of another 5.1 million to make up for the shortfall caused by retirement, illness, job-change; thus making a total of 6.8 million teachers that should be recruited by 2015 to provide adequate education to all school-age children.

Of the 1.7 million new teaching positions envisaged, sub-Saharan Africa is required to create 993,000 (almost one million), while nine countries in the region will need to recruit more than 10 per cent of their current teaching workforce to provide Universal Basic Education.
Lamentable though it seems, Nigeria’s current condition in primary education should challenge both the leaders and the led not just to moan but to re-evaluate the nation’s values and priorities.
The nobility and age-long prestige attached to the teaching profession spells out its paramount importance as the nursery for civilization. The task of forming and passing on the traditions, mores, laws and the totality of all that constitutes civilization, in short, the destiny of a people, are reposed in the teacher. Because of the utmost importance of the responsibilities attached to duties of teachers, teaching is rightly viewed as a calling that “requires special qualities of mind and heart, most careful preparation and a constant readiness to accept new ideas and to adapt the old”.

However, owing to an overpowering disorientation that venerates instant gratification and personal material benefits, there is low premium on and contemptuous disposition towards certification in education and teacher training education in general. This is a tragedy that Nigeria must work to reverse.
Since it is the duty of the state to ensure that all the citizens have access to ample basic education in order to safeguard this right to adequate primary education, the state should be vigilant over teachers training and the standard of teaching. The UNESCO challenge to Nigeria’s primary educational system also provides the opportunity for managers of the education sector to change tack and do better.

Because no human person is so inflexible that he or she cannot adapt to new experiences, a trainable class of primary school teachers could emerge from the mass of disoriented unemployed graduates if the right thing is done. It is trite knowledge that majority of Nigeria’s unemployed graduates are where they are partly because of the absence of proper career guidance. The UNESCO challenge is also another chance for optimum capacity-building by isolating graduates who have the aptitude and calling for the teaching profession. Such an endeavour, which could take the form of an intensive programme, based on national needs assessments and in consonance with the global best practice in the teaching profession, should be carried out to prepare aspiring teachers for the task ahead. Thereafter, an adequate distribution of these trained persons should be judiciously effected throughout the country.

The task of creating respectability for teachers’ education also lies in the hands of tertiary institutions training teachers. Basic education is the bedrock of a society’s intellectual development, and like the foundation of any edifice, it should neither be toyed with by the expert nor be abandoned to charlatans and quacks. In this regard, Colleges of Education should not be seen as an institution where dullards, never-do-wells are forced into to grudgingly acquire a certificate in education. In the same manner, Education departments in the universities must not be used by university administrators and racketeers as dumpsites for desperate and frustrated would-be matriculants. Ill-prepared for, and hardly ever motivated by the imposed course of study, many students end up graduating only to become a liability on the society.
All those who cherish the paramount importance of primary education as the foundation of manpower development in Nigeria or any society for that matter should spare some quality resources. This can then be invested in teachers’ education and remuneration to make the vocation attractive to the best and the brightest. This is the way to ensure that the foundation of the nation’s educational development is laid by the best hands.