‘Schools lack sufficient toilets, clean water’
Comrade Idris Ismail Kehinde is the chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Gwagwalada branch in the FCT. In this interview he speaks on the challenges facing the union; poor infrastructure and shortage of teachers among others. Excerpt:
What are the major challenges facing teachers and students in Gwagwalada Area Council?
We are facing a number of challenges. The major challenge is that we don’t have a secretariat building for the union. If someone can come around and say I am building a secretariat for the union, we shall appreciate and give him the necessary support. Teachers have poor working conditions; the issue of teachers’ welfare is something that we have to lobby for before we get any improvement.
I think the present administration should be responsive and alert; it should know that the country can’t progress without honouring teachers. It has to change the way teachers are treated. Teachers are the ones left with the responsibility of addressing the discipline of children yet their welfare is poor. Do you know that in FCT if a teacher is transferred he won’t get his transfer allowance? This is very bad. I know of a teacher who was transferred to a school in another town and had to struggle to move there with his family without any transfer allowance.
Lack of housing allowance is another challenge. During the administration of then FCT minister, Malam Nasir elRufa’i, he looked at the peculiarity of Abuja and he was paying us 100 per cent housing rent, but we discovered that the previous administration had sliced off about 40 per cent housing of the allowance. They were paying us about 60 percent.
Another thing is that we are not benefitting from housing scheme of the Federal Mortgage Bank. We have been contributing but we have not seen the benefit. There should be hazard allowance and dressing allowance but we don’t get any. It is that bad.
What effort are you making to ensure that government addresses the dearth of teachers in schools?
The issue of poor teacher/pupil ratio is common everywhere in the FCT. The effort we are making in this regard is that we are discussing with the LEA secretary to ensure that government employs more teachers. We are equally calling on the federal government to send more N-Power teachers to our schools. So, we are putting pressure on the education secretary to ensure that enough teachers are employed.
Schools are facing dearth of teachers but we can’t say exactly the required number needed now to tackle the situation. We have enough classes in Gwagwalada that is why we don’t merge classes. Schools have good infrastructure and you can attest to this yourself. The classes are big enough to accommodate the children.
However, we can say the infrastructure is okay compared to other area councils in the FCT, but Gwagwalada Area Council is trying. There is always room for improvement. For instance, there is nothing stopping us from having better furniture in the classes. We have good chairs and tables. They are fantastic.
There are also the challenge of classroom overcrowding. What is the union doing to get this addressed?
The challenge is actually there but what we are looking at is to comply with the UNESCO arrangement that teachers should handle 40 students. In Gwagwalada we have few teachers and up to 100 pupils in a class. So, most of the classrooms are overcrowded. Though we have big classes but it would be best and in line with best practice if we have a class of 40 pupils per teacher. We are talking to the area council on this issue and we hope the matter will be addressed.
When we came on board, less than two years ago, we discovered that the branch did not have a secretariat building. The first thing we did was to swing into action to ensure that we give the branch a building we can call our own. Within two years the secretariat has reached 70 percent completion. We were able to attain that with commitment, dedication and hard work.
We also discovered that some of the teachers had their employment letters bearing ‘provisional’ appointment. We felt that was not good enough, that it should be permanent and pensionable. We worked hard and ensured that our teachers were given letters on pensionable appointments. We also distributed free uniforms to pupils in various schools.
What other problems do you think government should tackle to making learning and teaching based on tested global standard?
Government should address the existing crisis of insufficient provision and maintenance of toilet facilities at public schools. Our toilet facilities are not good enough. Government must quickly address that and should also tackle the issue of poor water supply as well.
What other plans do you have for the improvement of teachers’ wellbeing?
We have a business investment plan for teachers. We are working with an agro investment group to train our teachers on various opportunities in agriculture. We have informed the teachers and we have started discussing with experts in that field. We want to train all the teachers to become agricultural entrepreneurs. We are facilitating that kind of training in various schools and we encourage teachers to be part of the NUT cooperatives so that they can access loans.
We want them to be employers of labour before retirement. We equally want to encourage teachers to strive to acquire more knowledge to improve themselves. We want our teachers to see themselves on top of the world. We want them to be happy and excel in their chosen profession.