Josiah Ajiboye, Registrar, Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), has said that about 300,000 teachers out of the total 700,000 teachers in Nigeria are unqualified.
He disclosed that Kano State alone has about 25,000 unqualified teachers, noting that about 8,000 of the unqualified teachers have so far been professionalised through the efforts of the state government and TRCN as a result of referral to Nigerian Teachers Institute (NTI), colleges of education and post graduate diploma in education.
Ajiboye was speaking on Wednesday at a symposium with the theme: ‘Teaching in freedom: Empowering Nigerian teachers for the 21st century challenges’, organised to commemorate the 2017 World Teachers’ Day.
He said politicisation of education by governors and other political office holders is the main reason for the influx of unqualified teachers in the system.
“Teaching is a deliberate and comprehensive profession,” he said.
“It is not supposed to be an all comers affairs that politicians have turned it to. The major reason is political, because governors want to please the people.
“When someone cannot find a job, they will approach a governor and say ‘please give him or her a teaching job to be managing’. So politicisation of education is the main reason for the influx of unqualified teachers in the system.
“Because of this, we have over 300,000 unqualified teachers out of about 700,000 teachers that we have in the country. In Kano, we have about 25,000 unqualified teachers but the good thing is that about 8000 of them have been professionalised by the state government.”
Ajiboye lamented that teachers in Nigeria were not well motivated, saying “their promotions are usually delayed; and where they are promoted, it is not cash-backed”.
He cited Oyo and Osun states that used to be leaders in public examinations but are now lagging behind due to poor motivation of teachers.
“We all know that South West is a leader when it comes to education, but recent performances in public examinations show that Oyo and Osun states are not doing well. We all know that some states owe teachers’ salaries up to eight months,” he said.
Speaking on insecurity as it affects teachers in the country, Ajiboye said more than 611 teachers had been killed in the North east since the onset of Boko Haram attacks in 2009, while 19,000 others have been displaced.
“The university had been under incessant terrorist attack, which hampered academic activities,” he lamented. “All these have forced many teachers in the region to flee for safety to other states and neighboring countries.”