The Governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum, on Thursday, described as “very scary” some findings submitted to him by a Committee 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 Committee’s report was presented to the Governor by the State Commissioner for Education, Lawan Abba Wakilbe, at the Government House in Maiduguri. Present during the presentation were members of the Committee including Chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board, Bulama Kagu.
This was disclosed in a statement made available to newsmen on Thursday.
“The report revealed out of 17,229 teachers across the 27 LGAs, only 5,439 representing 31.6% proved competent to teach, while 3, 815 teachers representing 22.1% are not competent to teach and are not trainable,” the statement said.
“The report however revealed that 7,975 teachers representing 46.3% were found not fully competent but trainable.
“The report also revealed that 2, 389 teachers representing 13.9% have been teaching without any formal qualification from any institution.
“A breakdown of the report’s findings across the 27 Local Government Areas showed, from the worst indices, that out of 224 teachers in Abadam Local Government Area 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 report also showed indices for other Local Government Areas from which Maiduguri Metropolitan Council had the highest number of 396 untrainable teachers, followed by Askira-Uba with 281 untrainable teachers, Chibok-268 untrainable teachers, Bama-246 untrainable teachers and Biu also with 219 teachers who cannot teach.
“The numbers were based on the overall number of teachers as some with higher numbers of untrainable teachers have higher number of teachers employed.
“The report also said that of all the 17,229 teachers, 1,627 representing 9.4% are degree holders; 8,153 representing 47.3% are NCE holders; 713 representing 4.1% are teachers grade II certificates’ holders while 2,281 representing 13.2% are SSCE/GCE holders with the remaining 2,389 representing 13.9% not having any formal certificate.”
Speaking after receiving the report, Zulum said the Committee members had informed him that they came across an NCE holder who could not write NCE during the test but was teaching students.
“We cannot move Borno forward unless we are able to sanitise our public schools system and If I am able to sanitise education, I would have achieved 50% of what I set out to achieve as Governor,” Zulum said.
He noted that he decided to set up the assessment Committee after series of spontaneous assessments of teachers during his regular unscheduled trips to Local Government Areas.
The statement added that Zulum assured that his administration won’t sack the 3,815 untrainable teachers discovered.
“Despite the report, Governor 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,” the statement said.
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