By Oguwike Nwachuku
Those opposed to the government of President Muhammadu Buhari are not comfortable with his statement on the poor credentials of teachers in Kaduna State over which he wants improvement.
Buhari declared support on Monday, November 13 for the primary school reform planned by Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State. El-Rufai wants to sack about 22,000 teachers who failed a recent competency test and replace them with 25,000 qualified and competent ones.
Many have, for usual political consideration rather than love for people and nation, knocked the plan. Buhari could not hide his disdain for teachers at a retreat of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) at the Villa in Abuja on Monday.
He said: “I visited one Nigerian I respect. He said after his training here in Nigeria and the United States, he went to his primary school to see what he could contribute. I will not mention his name; but when he went, he couldn’t differentiate between the students or the children and the teachers.
“And what El-Rufai is trying to do now is exactly what (the respected Nigerian) told me 10 years ago. It is a very serious situation when teachers cannot pass the exams they are supposed to teach the children to pass.
“It is a very tragic situation we are in and this gathering together to me is one of the important (things) in this administration.”
The responses to Buhari’s view from most Nigerians, mainly on online platforms, are shocking and ooze the usual political tendencies we resort to when we want to destroy every sector of our lives. Some questioned his right to discuss qualitative education when, in their assessment, there is controversy over his own certificate. I shall return to that.
Wikipedia defines a “teacher (also called a school teacher or, in some contexts, an educator) as a person who helps others to acquire knowledge, competences or values.
“Informally, the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. when showing a colleague how to perform a specific task).
“The role of a teacher is to help students apply concepts, such as math, English, and science through classroom instruction and presentations. Their role is also to prepare lessons, grade papers, manage the classroom, meet with parents, and work closely with school staff.”
Those who say a great nation is built through a teacher in the four walls of a classroom, and that a teacher’s profession is noble, are not fools. Whether they go by the name teacher or headmaster, tutor, principal, lecturer, professor, instructor, coach, educator, trainer, governess, among others, as identified by Longman dictionary, the point remains that the impact they make in our lives and by extension, our society, cannot be quantified. But that was then.
“What Exactly Do Nigerians Want?” Simon Kolawole asked on the back page of THISDAY on Sunday, November 12. He vented anger on Nigerians over their penchant to knock off every idea at reform regardless of potential gains.
Kolawole wrote: “We complain and cry, but we oppose any attempt to correct things. We are unable to reach anything close to national consensus on the way forward. “Some just take the opposite direction out of ignorance, some out of mass hysteria, some for political reasons, some for cheap publicity, some out of hardened ideologies and some for no reason. Our inconsistency is amazing.”
I cannot agree less. Ours has become a situation where everybody wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die. From every corner of the country, Nigerians complain about the poor state of things in education, but they are more content with complaining than seeking the solutions or even supporting efforts at correcting the anomaly. The reason is not far-fetched. Over the years, the families failed to rein in the basic things that should have seen their wards do well in school.
Collectively, we reduced the dignity once accorded the teaching profession by looking down on teachers. We stripped them of the right to appropriately train our wards to become responsible members of society. We look down on teachers as the new dreg of society, forgetting that a few years back, they were the rich men around. Yes, before now, teachers were the opinion moulders of our society, and the harbingers of a decent and disciplined life, among other attributes that made many young men and women look forward to becoming teachers.
I am talking about the good old days when teachers reciprocated the respect enjoyed from families in particular and the society at large by giving their best regardless of their meagre income. Today, the mental and psychological devaluation of the dignity of teachers by parents and the society have left us with no option than to see our schools populated with men and women who, themselves, have not received enough teaching and learning.
But here they are, enjoying the status of teachers, whose roles are noble. Why have we suddenly forgotten that the teachers training our wards today are products of Teacher Training Colleges, Colleges of Education and Universities where cult activities are almost a course? They are products of institutions where teachers hobnob with students for monetary or sexual gains depending on the sex of the student.
Today’s teachers are products of institutions where parents “sorted out” examinations for their wards to gain admission into higher institutions and continue to do so until they graduate. Most of today’s teachers are typical Nigerians who get employment in schools they teach not because they merited it but because they get letters from politicians introducing them to the authorities to employ as “priority”, their choice being that they helped the politicians rig themselves into elective offices, hence the time to pay back.
The danger of these years of connivance to destroy the fabric of education can be seen at all the nooks and crannies of the country where our youths, the so-called unemployed ones, litter the landscape – market squares, drinking pubs, clubs, among others, where they smoke and drink all day. It can be seen from their love for betting games, internet fraud, kidnapping, robbery, okada riding, and all manner of quick fixes for immediate cash to satisfy their lusts.
These youths are products of the institutions taught by the new crop of teachers that people like El-Rufai want to show the way out of the system. The tragedy of a society having products of educational institutions that can neither read nor write, and are perpetually in the market square, cybercafé for internet fraud-related businesses, beer and drinking pubs, guzzling alcohol, smoking all manner of weeds and surfing the web for pornography should be a source of worry to all.
One Nigerian who is bothered about the failure in the educational system is Olutoyin Olakunrin, a chartered accountant and woman of many parts.
When turned 80 recently she told a newspaper in an interview: “I see so many people who have graduated from secondary school and who are not educated. In many states, primary education is still carried out in the mother language.
“When do we convert to English language that is common throughout the country and will help them outside the country?
“Many teachers who are working now have missed education and are not qualified to teach the younger ones. We have a craze for going into the universities rather than for teaching and technical education. “Many leave university without understanding the purpose for which they have graduated. In fact, many graduates pay their way through, especially the girls, through cash or kind. We should do more to produce quality teachers….”
Politics, more than anything else, is at the heart of our failure to get it right, not just in the education, but in other sectors. It was politics that stopped former Governor Kayode Fayemi from having his way with competency test in Ekiti State. The same factor played out in Edo State when former Governor Adams Oshiomhole ventured to test teachers in his state.
Politics is also playing out now in Kaduna State with El-Rufai’s moves. In all the situations where attempts were made to test teachers, they turned out to be the ones being taught by the governors, as we saw in Edo.
Nigerian politicians have demonstrated much love for those in the teaching profession for the wrong reasons. Teachers are game for their kind of politics. But politicians do not love them that much to entrust their own wards in their care, hence they send their children outside the country for qualitative education. Their love for teachers is for them to teach the children of the rest of us, not theirs.
That explains why politicians are always in the forefront of criticism of teachers’ competency test. They have long had their way with teachers. They have long infiltrated them and their associations. That is why the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), and even the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) are no longer what they used to be – credible, dependable bodies.
Is it therefore a surprise that Shehu Sani, a senator from Kaduna, has repeatedly accused El-Rufai of trying to replace teachers with his cronies? Politics.
Who does not also know that Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose is also using the teachers’ competency test to play high wire politics?
Hear Fayose: “By openly supporting the sack of about 22,000 teachers in Kaduna State, President Buhari has approved loss of jobs as the official policy of the All Progressives Congress (APC) instead of creation of three million jobs per year that the party promised Nigerians.
“Not minding the state’s inability to pay salary as and when due, owing to paucity of fund, I will not sack any worker under any guise.
“Here in Ekiti State, the immediate past APC government used competency test to demote many secondary school principals, vice principals and primary school head teachers, leading to sudden death of many of them.
“The government then tried to force the competency test on the teachers but they resisted.
“Today, students in Ekiti State are still being taught by the same teachers that the APC government said were not competent and the students were the ones whose performance gave the state first position in NECO in 2016 and 2017.
“The state also moved from 26 per cent performance in the West African Examination Council (WAEC) examination in 2014 to 36.5 per cent in 2015, 42per cent in 2016 and 74.86 per cent in 2017.“Therefore, instead of hiding under competency test to sack teachers, the APC government both at state and federal government levels should come to Ekiti State and learn how we were able to get optimum performance from the same set of teachers the immediate past APC government in the state labelled incompetent and harassed with competency test.”
With Fayose’s position, is it therefore surprising that the NUT has keyed into the politics of the competency test? The NUT National Executive Council meeting on Friday, November 17 in Abakaliki rejected the competency test as illegal and unconstitutional, and that it did not pass the test and measurement standard.
National President of NUT, Michael Olukoya, said after the meeting: “The Nigerian Union of Teachers totally condemns the decision by the Kaduna State government to sack over 21,000 teachers from its employment over purported incompetence based on an unstructured competency test.
“The union strongly rejects in its entirety the purpose, intent, process and the outcome of the exercise and hereby calls for the immediate cancellation of the results of the competency test.
“It is common knowledge that teaching is a profession regulated by a statutory and competent body (TRCN) which is saddled with the responsibility of administering test and the registration of teachers. “To do anything otherwise by the state government in this regard is an infringement on the profession and the extant laws of the land.”
To Olukoya, what El-Rufai is doing is undemocratic and against the rule of law. Granted that there are bodies that oversee the performance of teachers in the country, I am yet to see where it is written in our Constitution that the government should not intervene where incompetent teachers are discovered in order to remedy the problem.
The question Olukoya should even be providing answers to is where the teachers’ regulatory body has been all these years that he wants El-Rufai to succumb to dialogue over teachers that are destroying our wards in the name of employment.
If the rule of law means retaining incompetent teachers in schools, please let us reflect on the products so far churned out by these teachers that are roaming the streets and are referred to as unemployable school leavers. I do not know of what benefit it would be for El-Rufai to embarrass, disgrace or humiliate teachers if they really know what they are doing. The same applies to any other governor.
The reason teachers have allowed their image to be so whittled down is because the system encourages all manner of persons as teachers the way we have seen it in Kaduna, Edo and Ekiti. Teachers worth the name must not allow anyone to treat them as sympathy cases as far as payment of their salaries, allowances and pensions is concerned.
The NUT should have been at the vanguard of moves to ensure that only competent teachers are seen in our classrooms instead of thoughtless sympathy over the loss of jobs by teachers contributing to further denigrate the respect and nobility of the teaching profession.
We need a new crop of teachers who truly understand what demands of teaching are both at primary and secondary school levels. Teachers who will see themselves as role models, not ones who will see themselves as sympathy cases and vent their anger on children entrusted in their care.
We need teachers who are ready to inspire and encourage pupils and students to strive for greatness, live their fullest potentials, and help bring out the best in them. Teachers that want their pupils and students to see them as their first role models, looking up to them for guidance and advice. Teachers who will teach pupils and students academics and also life lessons.
We want to see teachers who will see themselves as having the experience to perceive where students are going. Teachers who know too well they had gone through where students are headed. Teachers who appreciate what they had undergone and want to help students go through them and impart lessons on subject matter and life lessons.
Those who are trying to drag Buhari’s certificate scandal into this matter should be reminded that he does not need any more teachers in any classroom at 74. I doubt also what would take El-Rufai to a classroom now. But they will be held accountable if they fail to realise the damage incompetent teachers has done to their environment, which may include those related to them.
The fact that Fayemi and Oshiomhole failed to see the reform through does not mean another person cannot bring it to pass. If we think we have not collectively destroyed the nobility of the teacher’s profession because of our inordinate ambitions and caused our system to pay dearly for it, then our desire should be for the competency test to be extended to all the states in Nigeria for us to have a new beginning in our educational system.
