Some stakeholders have commended Gov. Babagana Zulum of Borno for his planned recruitment of 5,000 teachers in the state.
Zulum has announced plan to engage more teacher during his second term in office as part of measures to improve the standard of education in the state.
The stakeholders, who spoke in a separate interviews in Maiduguri on Tuesday, said the recruitment would go a long way in addressing the current teachers’ employment deficit in the state.
Mr Bulama Abiso, the Chairman of the Network of Civil Society Organizations in Borno, told said it was a welcome development intended to address challenges brought by the increased number of students in public schools.
Abiso said: “It has been a long time since we have been asking for this. No matter the structure you have on the ground, teachers play a vital role and for a very long time, teachers at the lower level have not been adequately recruited.
“So, this new development will go along way to positively impact the teachers. Not only the employment, we are also agitating for the welfare of the teachers.
“I hope the teachers who will be recruited will be placed appropriately on their grade levels and those at the Teaching Service Board will also have their promotion and placed on their appropriate grades.
“Because in most cases you will find out that old teachers are having their promotion stagnated while new newly recruited teachers on Grade Levels 7, 8 and 9 will have their steady promotion.”
“Also, teaching materials and training of teaching are crucial to their development. So we want the government to revive in-house training.
“The state government needs to also strengthen its monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to ensure that whatever it puts in place, will be effectively implemented.
“The government should also deliberately ensure its door remained open so that even international partners can play a role in the development of the education sector to reduce duplication and wastages,” he said.
The immediate past chairman of the Nigerian Union of Teachers in the state, Mr Muhammed Jubril, noted that the planned recruitment would fill the huge gap created by the action of insurgents.
Jubril reminisced that hundreds of teachers were killed by insurgents, noting that the shortage of qualified teachers is further compounded by the poor distribution of the teaching workforce, resulting in some schools having inadequate numbers of teachers.
He however, urged the state government to consider recruiting additional 5,000 primary teachers, noting that the planned employment will only cover secondary schools.
“You will find out that there are 3,000 pupils in school with not less than 12 teachers,” saying the primary school teachers are also badly affected.
He urged the government to also consider paying retired teachers their gratuity as at when due, noting that in most cases some teachers spent more than eight years without receiving their gratuities.
On his part, the state Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Yusuf Inuwa, said that the government should also consider employment of more civil servants from between Grade Levels one and six to fill the existing gap.
“We need 5,000 medium class workers to be recruited to fill in the gaps in all the ministries,” he said.
He called on the state House of Assembly to hasten the passage of the request for the extension of workers’ years of service from 35 to 40 years of service and from 60 years to 65 years of birth.
Inuwa also appealed to the state governor to immediately assent to the law as soon as it was passed.
