Because he’s a teacher! -By Ismail Misbahu

He has become victim of unjustifiable insult from both his students and their parents; a subject of massive exploit to his employer, and a filthy residue on the eyes of his Ministry, the Education. Today teacher is all these!

Abundant graduates on the streets unemployed have become victims of a failed system that cannot regulate, restore or even liberate their recruitment by private sector. As for private schools, these graduates become teachers of no kind. Government and Ministry of Education have no knowledge of them; what they only know are the plates of porridge and the money they collect in the name of supervision―a selective one indeed, certainly directed to areas/schools whose students are from elitist class. Poor public schools―where children of the poor, form the corpus are excluded for supervision because they may not offer plates of porridge and money. They’re therefore made to receive ‘visits’ of officials from the MoE. Similarly, poor private schools are not being signaled with priors of alert, of any official visit from the MoE, because they must be implicated nevertheless. By contrast, their elitist ones must have the knowledge of official visit because they must not let go of their avaricious pockets empty free, not even let go in hunger, of their whopping potbellies! This, for all the worst it assumes, has been the best option among several.

The second option comes where there are no plates of porridge, and there’s no money. So unfortunate that the real supervision must have come by the way to resolve the anger and of course, settle the desperate egos of these so called ‘education officers’. They supervise with hearts and anxiety; in a manner that interprets their implication unrest till the end. The questions of school facilities, learning materials, proper input in diaries, lesson plans and registers etc. are the subjects of harassment and indictment. The substance of the teaching; the condition of the teacher as well, and of course his paltry package, have never been a focus of attention.

Education minister, Adamu Adamu

A bold shame of disappointment po-faced these same officials from the MoE who registered, trade-marked and designed x, y, or z building/abandoned vacant land/open space as private school. This type of school which has been their creation has now become victim of their insult and implication. The same money and plates of porridge that ‘marked’ the building as private school also depletes its structure as decrepit and unresourceful. It means that with money and plates of porridge, even fowls’ cage can be a designated private school! Shameless people!

Deprived of their position, the MoE, Federal and State Governments have become a ‘two-eye-blind’, still not been able to see the light of monitoring the recruitment process of their teeming number of graduates into private teaching jobs; their packages as well, not in harmony with the standard salary measure in public ones. Part of the rationale behind this idea is to expand the prospects of checkmating the gross misconducts of the schools i.e. their operational standard and the very important question of their legal status by law. The required minimum intervention of government in private sector has almost completely withered away virtually in all private organizations. Even more mind-boggling is the fact that most of these organizations―including the elitist private schools are largely owned by public officials in the MoE―including those on whose hands government policies are initiated. What type of schools, and what type of students? The recent JAMB result must not leave us without the answer!

The same type of schools, force and send children away to their homes for school fees to settle their teachers. Ironically the money fetched off from parents by the proprietors, digits in multiple millions at the end of every term. But the meager payment to the teachers always rates in average of 15k per month! Still however, the annoying delay in the payment of this peanut is not the concern of many proprietors much as the use of the teachers’ salary to source loans in banks triggered a bothersome process in the payment procedure i.e. through bank accounts—from which a temporary ‘hiatus’ is created to upset the flow of the income. The ‘craft’ in the verisimilar remark that ‘money cannot reward the services of a teacher’ was not without its animadverted meaning, of pushing the teacher in queer street, lacking respect from members of the community―hypocritical as it becomes, the PTA in general!

With these types of schools, teachers are still made to bow in deference before their proprietors―whom quite number of the teachers high-ranked by qualification. A teacher is called for application, shortlisted like a dollar-earned job offer, interviewed and even screened afterward, yet to so many parents he’s unyielding. Arrogant parents subject teachers to all manners of abuse, invectives and insults. The same parents of this sort prostrate before their children and worship their desires. Through a ‘green-list’ contact with the MoE, they succeeded in approving their children wishes―of banning punishment of ‘defaulters’ in schools as well as the demotion of the unfits and undeserved. The same parents of these immoral lots made teachers to obey the parasitic tendencies of their children in class; as well as let go unscathed, of the children engendering instincts, so much so that these attitudes imperil others’ through demoralized school regulations habituated by the children pangs of disobedience, eye-brows, arrogance and haughtiness. Even so were these attitudes, the children still remained guilty-free. Nothing stepped this further to an unmitigated disaster than the realization, by the students, that ‘this teacher’ is a product of the money their parents paid to the proprietors to sustain him and the school system. O my God!

Reddened, as they always appear, the teachers’ reactions and complains have fallen deaf of ears, neither do their students’ parents listen to them nor do their chief employers―the proprietors―the MoE―and of course, the government. Not even the NUT which, by no means the only hope has become a toothless bulldog! I may recall an incidence at which seven female school teachers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja petitioned the Minister of Education, then Dr. Igwe Aja Nwachukwu over the decision of their employer to terminate their appointment on account of their being pregnant. These seven women were teachers employed by a private school at two of its branches: Gwarimpa and Wuse. The proprietress’ primary motive was money; snooping on the ‘risk’, that seven teachers would soon go on maternity leave, take time off to attend antenatal clinic and also breastfeed babies. Never had in the mind of this proprietress any motivational agenda to support her staff! She’s restless for profit. The Ministry to whom the teachers’ complain was addressed, took the petition back to the dogs—everything fell in deaf ears! A teacher is not the concern at all; he’s just a driver of his masters and their children, going by the direction he’s told to follow, doing what he’s told to do so, and obeying what they wished for themselves not what his profession instructs him to act upon.

Sorry for you, teacher!! I suggest you quit the job when you find a better alternative because you can’t assume any blame of this failed system. You really are not because you’re a teacher!

Ismail wrote via:
Ismailmusbahu15@gmail.com