Borno Benighted Teachers -By Kene Obiezu

There is no doubt that if Nigeria is to recover from its many struggles, education will play a stirring role. This is especially true of the North where Boko Harams expansive campaign against western civilization especially western education has dismantled the educational structures on which a desperately disadvantaged region relied on to close the gap to other parts of the country.

Schools have been razed to the ground and teachers slaughtered. School children who otherwise had stable lives have been forced to adapt to IDP camps sticky with squalor. The chilling effect has been that education, that most pristine of gifts, which is especially potent against the forces of destabilization and deceit, has taken blows, many of them fatal. It is no coincidence that out of Nigerias over 10 million pupils who are out of school, many come from the North.

In many ways, Mr. Babagana Umara Zulum, the Borno State Governor has blazed the trail in many aspects since becoming governor of his state in 2019. He has heroically tried to rebuild a state devastated by the mortar bombs of Boko Haram and ISWAP.

The governor was recently alarmed and rightly so. The source of his alarm was a report which captured the findings by a Committee he had constituted and tasked with conducting basic literacy and numeracy competency assessment of 17,229 Local Education Authority teachers across 27 local government areas (LGAs) of the State.

The report revealed that out of 17,229 teachers across the 27 LGAS, only 5,439 representing 31.6 per cent were competent to teach, while 3,815 teachers representing 22.1 percent were not competent to teach and were not also trainable. The report further revealed that 7,975 teachers representing 46.3 per cent were found not fully competent but trainable while 2,389 teachers representing 13.9 per cent have been teaching without any qualification from any institution.

This report has predictably sent alarm bells chiming not just across the state but across the entire country especially in the North where education has been on a downward spiral for over a decade now.

This report from Borno State about the dangerously infectious ignorance of those who are supposed to impart knowledge uncomfortably brings to memory results of similar assessment tests conducted in Kaduna State by Mr. Nasir El-Rufai the Kaduna State Governor when he came on board in 2015.The exercise unearthed the states legion of ignorance as many of the teachers who had been in the education sector for many years were found wanting.

A similar exercise in Edo State under former Governor Mr. Adams Oshiomole had exposed a principal who could not handle elementary questions meant to test her basic competency.

If indeed it is incompetence that cries out from classroom to classroom in Nigeria, it begs the question what those whose specialty is incompetence have to teach they young minds entrusted to them.

But the problem runs pretty deep. It goes to the root of education in Nigeria; it is an intergenerational wound. With the standards of education in Nigeria falling by the year and governments across the country content to misplace their priorities in allowing education to play second fiddle to other sectors, a foolproof system of garbage in, garbage out has been foisted on the country.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) recently went on strike, thereby savagely interrupting academic calendars and the lives of Nigerian undergraduates across the country. These cataclysmic strike actions remain wholly avoidable. But of course, it is not the priority of those in positions of authority to avoid them given that they are hardly stakeholders in the countrys education sector. So, the circus continues, churning out a staggering number of teachers who are themselves untaught, unteachable, untrainable and tainted by all the telltale signs of incompetence.

Teaching in Nigeria remains a largely thankless job but its place at the heart of any country determined to improve in every aspect cannot be diminished by the delusions of those who seek to serve only themselves.

This necessarily means that all those involved in the noble art of teaching as well as those whose task it is to make sure that teachers are and stay comfortable must always be kept on their toes.
If Nigeria hopes to raise a generation free from the spell of the twisted ignorance, its teachers must get in right with what they teach children from the first day of school until they are sufficiently formed.

To do this, the teachers need all the support they can get. While their reward is in heaven, their remuneration here must be guaranteed and improved to become commensurate with the many sacrifices they make. To do otherwise is to betray a profession that has proven resilient, regenerative, redemptive and restorative over many years.

Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com