If there is any area of manpower development that has suffered neglect for many years, it is the teacher training.
The Nigerian Union of teachers (NUT) , may perhaps not have suffered from continuous cry for teacher development, improvement and welfare, but would not hesitate to say that all is not well in the sub-sector.
The teachers, particularly the basic education teachers, are not succinctly motivated and their salaries that vary from state to state are nothing to write home about.
Acceptably, education is on the concurrent list of legislation, where local government councils are supposed manage primary education with complement from the states, but that aspect of the law has been thrown to the wind.
Thus, we are in a precarious situation that state government would received what is accrued to local government, yet pocket it and even when they want to utilise it, would claim it comes from the state budget.
The concern of this article is, however, not on the management of basic education in the country, but on how could the movers’ ideas be pivotal to the drive for sustainable teacher education in the country.
Again, there is a growing concern that manpower development in the teaching profession is gradually extinguishing because the younger generation are no longer interested in taking teaching as a profession.
It is no longer news to hear that a landlord has refused to rent his house to a man because he is a teacher.
The truth is that they are poorly paid, owed salaries for months or years and cannot stand aloof or other professional because of these and many more factors.
Suffice to say that in the pre and post independence era, teachers were respected, honoured and even sacrificed for them because of the influence they commanded.
No stubborn child ever had of the name of his or her teacher and would retreats from awful action and bend for the father or mother’s directives and commands.
Where did the derailment occur in the history of the country? One would not hesitate, but say that the oil boom era, disorganised several things, either for the good or bad for the country including what the colonial masters left behind.
Teacher education, which was the cynosure of a distinguished family, became the food for the dogs. No parent would want his son or daughter to become a teacher.
However, the hand writing is changing for the better in the current change mantra. While the federal government has assured of employing 500, 000 graduate teachers, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), is not relenting in the training of teachers under the Federal Teacher Training scheme.
In this regard, the Executive Secretary, National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Professor Monday Joshua, said with the slogan: “Quality teachers, pride of the Nation”, the commission was poised to see that products of colleges of education were highly rated, even beyond Africa.
At a forum organised by Education Correspondent Association of Nigeria (ECAN)(, Joshua said the commission has prescribed minimum academic standards for would be teachers and teachers already in the profession.
First, the commission has set up panels to go round all colleges of education, federal, states and private to ascertain their needs and challenges.
These panels would also examine the mudus oprandi of each and every college of education with a view to understanding their operational guideline in line with prescribed rules and regulations and mandate guiding the supervision of these colleges.
Joshau stated inter alia that the commission would continue to monitor the performance of the colleges to ensure that standards were adhered to, while the colleges were directed to have self evaluation without necessarily waiting for the commission.
According to him, the commission has also produced teaching practice manual for colleges to build the capacity of their manpower, but expressed the fear of variables like imparting the right knowledge on students.
This is why a typical Nigerian parent, and even the students, would not like to become teachers tomorrow and research has shown that those, who ventured into colleges of education, do so because they had no opportunity to go into the university system for their education.
The education think tank, did, obviously, not forget the value system when he noted that the respect accorded teachers in the past would have to be restored to encourage younger generations to take teaching as a profession.
To achieve this, he said government has the power and the wherewithal to introduce incentives that would attract students’ teachers into the profession.
Recalling the circumstances that made him to become a teacher, Joshua said his parents could not send him to the university, but when opportunity came to be trained as a teacher, they opted for it.
The federal government, according to him, was incentivising students monetarily and socially with bursary, while state of origin was not lacking in supports.
Bringing back these incentives to attract students into the teaching profession, would not be a misplaced priority after all, but a step to rekindle and re-develop the teaching profession because no country can rise above it education system and not teacher can rise above its education standard.
On the quality of teachers and minimum teaching qualification, Joshua said the National Certificate on Education (NCE), was not lower, in any sense, as minimum teaching qualification.
Factually, the federal government is the decider of policy and the commission is only and implementer and Joshua said a three-year training programme is enough to train a teacher who could handle the primary and secondary education in the country.
Vividly, he recalled that in post independence era, brilliant students, who completed their primary education with flying colours became teachers and were producing best brains and, therefore, wondered why those who spent three years, would come out as good teachers for the basic education system.
