The Plight of Nigerian Teachers

For too  long Nigerian teachers have suffered unspeakable deprivations and indignities in the hands of government as a result of their ridiculously poor remuneration and working environment .The worst part of this pathetic situation is that governments at all levels treat teachers with utmost disdain and contempt whenever teachers clamour for a just and equitable package .Yet we always mouth the truism that for Nigeria to make any meaningful progress ,education as a means of human resource development must be adequately taken care as a matter of top priority. The poor quality of Nigerian university graduates is directly associated with their poor academic foundation in the primary and secondary educational stages.

     Political leaders from the president down to the councilors , and bureaucrats from the permanent secretaries to the grade level II civil servants(el-rufai has outsourced level I) have all passed through the hands of teachers ,but these ingrates have hardly looked back to improve the welfare of their benefactors(teachers).Today teachers exhibit  the lowest morale; in fact, they are catastrophically wretched, and their uninspiring material condition is a great disincentive to aspiring teachers and students alike, to the extent that out of any sample of 1000 students ,you will hardly get one whose future ambition is to become a teacher, or  to be married to a  teacher. The historically prestigious teaching profession can now be justifiably associated with poverty manifesting in thread-bare clothes, long face, hunger, ejection from rented houses, dejection, alienation and squalor. Those outside the profession thank their stars and pray never to come in, while those inside look forward to the day they will move on to rewarding jobs. It is much a refuge for desperate souls facing a Hobson’s choice as it is the first love of the remaining multitude who are extremely patient and dedicated despite the daunting odds (born teachers).This unfortunate scenario is a reflection of the value we attach to academic work in our strange sense of job evaluation.

    Teachers naturally deserve the highest pay in the land, but today the exact opposite is the case. For example, a chemistry graduate who decides (or is forced by circumstances)to teach in a public secondary school in Borno state will earn less than 15000 Naira monthly as salary .However his/her classmate in  NNPC will earn about 10 times that amount .By what criteria did we come to the conclusion that working in NNPC is more important than teaching in a primary or secondary school? More painfully illustrated, if today, a secondary school certificate holder joins the military, the police, road safety, the customs, the prison service, immigration or even the civil defence, he/she will collect about 26000 a month as a recruit, while his/her teacher( a graduate) will earn much less. Freshly commissioned graduates in the military and paramilitary services collect up to 70000 Naira. Where is our sense of justice and reward? My neighbour who has been teaching in a primary school in Maiduguri for 16 year s( i.e. since 1992) told me he earns 11000 naira monthly .He, still a bachelor, has virtually nothing to show for all those long years of dedicated service. A fresh primary school teacher in the employ of Borno state government gets 4000 Naira as monthly salary .Headmasters earn between 12 to 13000 per month. I am shocked to learn that regular teachers envy NCE holders collecting the token 10000 Naira monthly allowance from the Federal Teachers Scheme of the UBE. In Maiduguri ,retired  teachers had to go back to their relatives in the villages as renting  a house, not to talk of building one, becomes a jidali. The stories are similar in other states of the federation.  

     The much-touted Teachers Salary Structure (TSS) represents only a paltry 27.5 % increase, but even this has been a subject of long drawn-out negotiations and deliberate cynical delays on the part of the “unpertubed” government. And since the federal government has  evasively handed over the matter to state governments, Nigerians should expect more academic upheavals because most state governors abhor any increase on the recurrent expenditure, not minding the fact that improving the welfare of teachers will dramatically(if not magically) improve the quality of education in their states. With the exception of teachers, all other professional groups in Nigeria enjoy special pay packages such as CONTISS, CONUASS,HAPSS,HAPMSS etc. That is not to say that those groups are happy with their lots.                                                            .

     Teachers teach people how to enjoy life, but ironically the teachers themselves don’t enjoy it. A teacher I had met In Kaduna narrated to me the touching story of his encounter with a parent who wanted private extra lessons for his child .The teacher had expected a reasonable amount to supplement his meagre salary, but the unprintable amount the said parent offered was to say the least an insult to the dignity of the human person, and an index of the contempt in which even parents hold teachers. At a point in our discussion, the terribly frustrated teacher did the unthinkable, obviously clutching at straws. He frontally accused two of the world’s most venerable teachers—Mallam Aminu Kano and Shettima Ali Monguno-of actively projecting and promoting the image of the teacher as a poor man! “Who wants poverty”? , he lamented. I can’t tell if indeed the ascetic duo had glorified poverty among teachers, but I can infer from my reading of  The Ink of the Scholar, authored by Alhaji Abdurrahman Mora and Peter Canham, that  the attitude of policy makers towards  the material welfare of teachers seems to be derived from ancient Greek tradition where, before the establishment of formal schools, education was considered so invaluable that it could not be exchanged for money, and  “… a person who offered to teach people for money would have been despised as a mere trader”. This Greek tradition has strongly influenced Islamic tradition of education up to the present day. (There are no school fees in the Almajiri system!).

       Thus from philosopher-kings, teachers have plummeted to “philopauper things”. From Prophets, head of states, prime ministers, councillors and consultants to ruler, teachers have become outcasts .The late Sheikh Ahmad Abulfathi had once said that no amount of money can be said to be too much to be paid to the teacher. He added that even if you ask a person to just look after your child while you go away to earn your livelihood, that person deserves a handsome reward, let alone somebody who imparts knowledge to your child. Imam Ali (R.A.)  said ,”I am a slave to the person who has taught  me a single letter ; if he likes, he can sell me, if he likes, he can  set me free” or words to that effect. In Nigeria today, the teacher is the slave.

    The teacher is a human being with needs and wants .In fact being a repository of knowledge, he/she is a special specimen of Homo sapiens, deserving of not only respect, prestige and care, but also a living wage and even more. Teaching is not a curse; it is a noble profession and a tertiary economic activity. Teachers are not slaves working in plantations. They are dedicated citizens giving their best to the society. Reward-in-heaven as the opium of the teacher should be de-emphasized. Let’s reward them in the here and now. They should live well to teach well. Sociologists say a society functions well when it matches roles and talents, and rewards talents adequately. I hereby propose a minimum of 50,000 Naira per month to a beginning primary school teacher. The argument by economists that salary increase by fiat will push up inflation still leaves unanswered the question as to why the wide and wild salary differential between teachers and other professional groups.

  In the final analysis, the profile of all Nigerians, not only teachers, can only improve if and when our leaders shun corruption and deliver good governance and social justice .Lest I forget, I invite all and sundry to also consider the class dimension of the plight of teachers .How many children of the elite can be found in the public schools today?. I once overheard a commercial bus driver say, “We are slaves and our children will be slaves because we can’t pay their school fees”.

Babagana Modu Monguno(ngumati.critic@yahoo.com)

Department of Political Science, University of  Maiduguri.

Robot  # 1 | 01.07.2008 08:38

The Plight of Nigerian Teachers For too long Nigerian teachers have suffered u...Read the full article.