WRITTEN BY SIR CHUDI EJIE
Education, no doubt, plays a lot of roles in nation building. It ensures free, democratic, just and egalitarian society as well as a united, strong and self reliant nation. Education provides great and dynamic economy and a lot of opportunities for citizens.
In view of these objectives, the Universal Primary Education (U.P.E) was launched on Monday, September 16, 1976. This was a demonstration of the Federal Government’s Policy to provide equal opportunities for all children of school age, irrespective of circumstances of their births. Every child therefore should regard basic education as a right and not a privilege.
Education, therefore, is a path through which people progress. Through education, human beings, like raw materials, are processed through schooling and converted into finished products. Thus, we have the doctors, lawyers, nurses, accountants, journalists, governors, and etcetera.
These professionals and, in this context, the finished products, pass through teachers. A competent teacher is a good citizen, a community leader, an innovator and an enlightened person. He is a reservoir of knowledge and skills. A good teacher knows his subject and realizes he is teaching students and not subjects. A good teacher does not teach inaccurate or out-dated facts; otherwise, the society will crack. Knowledge is not static but dynamic. A good teacher must be abreast with developments in his or her field. A good teacher must have some rudimentary working knowledge of child developmental psychology. In fact, a good teacher understands children, just as a good driver of mechanic must understand his car.
Teachers have their challenges though, but they have to cope adequately with the monumental tasks that lie ahead of them. A teacher has to be well-trained for his job. He must be willing to share new information and skills with his fellow teachers. He must seek more knowledge on his own initiative and above all, be flexible and willing to experiment. He or she should not be afraid of failure. This is the kind of teacher Nigeria needs now.
To achieve this, the new teacher must be carefully selected and trained, effectively inducted, professionally encouraged through regular-in-service training and adequately remunerated for his services to the nation.
However, it is sad that the Nigerian teacher, unlike his counterparts in most parts of the world, is one of the most poorly paid of all professional workers. Other workers enjoy greater security than the teacher in Nigeria. Yet, the services of teachers are indispensable to a nation; for they, unlike any other professional group, influence in no small measure the lives of the nation’s youth and the nation’s future.
Kudos must however go to the likes of Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra state for placing the welfare of teachers topmost on his priority list. This is because he realizes that poorly trained and lowly remunerated teachers will produce poorly trained doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, captains of industries, parliamentarians, clergy men, legislators, journalists and the like.
Indeed, teachers directly influence the quality and quantity of services provided by all the sectors in the society. Poor teachers reproduce their own kinds, just as good teachers reproduce their own kinds too. The status of the teaching profession in Nigeria is very low. In some states, teachers are owed months of arrears of salaries.
Teaching should therefore be seen as an end in itself and not a means to an end. It should also not be seen as a stepping stone to other professions to avoid constituting a class of disgruntled teachers.
Teachers must not relent in commending Governor Obiano – Akpokuedike global – for the wonderful job he is doing in Anambra State. His exploits in the education sector has endeared him to the teachers in the state, resulting in Anambra coming tops in both local and international examinations and competitions. The most recent are the teachers who came tops in Nigeria and were rewarded by President Mohammadu Buhari on the Teachers Day in Abuja on Friday last week and the Regina Pacist Model Secondary School girls, who won Gold at the Technovation competition in America. Indeed, Willie is really working.

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