At least 61 percent of the 17,229 teachers across the 27 LGAs in Borno state are incompetent and not qualified to teach, a new report has revealed.
These were some of the findings of a committee headed by the State’s Commissioner for Education, Engr Lawan Abba Wakilbe.
The committee was tasked with conducting basic literacy and numeracy competency assessment of 17,229 Local Education Authority teachers across 27 local government areas of the state.
The report was presented to Governor Babagana Zulum at the Government House in Maiduguri on Thursday.
The report revealed that only 5,439 teachers (31.6%) proved competent to teach, while 3, 815 teachers (22.1%) are not competent to teach and are not trainable.
The report further revealed that 7,975 teachers (46.3%) were found not fully competent but trainable.
It also states that 2,389 teachers (13.9%) have been teaching without any formal qualification from any institution.
A further breakdown of the report’s findings across the 27 local government areas showed that out of the 224 teachers in Abadam LGA in northern Borno, only 14 are competent to teach, as 74 are untrainable while 136 can be trained.
The report further said out of Kala-Balge’s 272 teachers, only 21 are competent to teach with 118 untrainable and 133 trainable.
The findings also showed that Maiduguri Metropolitan Council has the highest number of 396 untrainable teachers, followed by Askira-Uba 281, Chibok 268, Bama 246, and Biu 219.
The numbers were based on the overall number of teachers as some with higher numbers of untrainable teachers have higher numbers of teachers employed.
The data revealed that in Jere LGA ,only 16 teachers are untrainable out of 1,159 teachers from which 936 proved competent, while 204 are not fully competent but trainable.
The report also said that of all the 17,229 teachers, 1,627 (9.4%) are degree holders, 8,153 (47.3%) are NCE holders, 713 (4.1%) are Grade II certificates holders, while 2,281 (13.2%) are SSCE/GCE holders, with the remaining 2,389 (13.9%) not having any formal certificate.
Governor Zulum has described the report as “very scary, ”saying the committee members had informed him that came across an NCE holder who could not write NCE during the test but was still teaching students.
Zulum said, “We cannot move Borno forward unless we are able to sanitize our public schools system and If I am able to sanitize education, I would have achieved 50% of what I set out to achieve as governor.”
Despite the report, Zulum assured that he will not sack the 3,815 untrainable teachers but he will, depending on the recommendations made by the Committee, consider approving the transfer of the teachers to areas where they can perform other tasks such as tree planting at the ministry of environment.
