House of Representatives Urges Teachers Council to Expose Unqualified Teachers

The Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria has been urged by the House of Representatives to publicly disclose the information of unqualified teachers in Nigeria. The representatives emphasized that only individuals who are registered, certified, and licensed should be allowed to teach in schools.

This call came after the Committee on Basic Education and Services presented its report to the House, and the lawmakers considered it as a Committee of the Whole. The committee, chaired by Prof Julius Ihonvbere, included the recommendation in the ‘Report of the Committee on Basic Education and Services on the Call for Recruitment of Qualified and Registered Teachers in Nigerian Schools.’

In a previous report by The PUNCH on May 4, 2023, the Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria, which serves as the regulatory body for the teaching profession in the country, revealed that over 70 percent of private school teachers in the South-West geopolitical zone were unqualified. The South-West states include Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, and Ekiti.

According to Professor Josiah Ajiboye, the registrar of the TRCN, these teachers lack the necessary qualifications to register with the council, thus rendering them unqualified. In April, Ajiboye expressed concern over the shortage of professional teachers in the Nigerian education sector.

To address this challenge, the TRCN took action against more than 7,000 unqualified teachers in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states. The council highlighted that finding highly committed, dedicated, and capable teachers has become increasingly difficult in schools, which has adversely affected the quality of education.”

The House committee recommended that the House should “urge the Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria to publicise the data of quacks and unqualified teachers per state in Nigeria.”

It also recommended that the Nigeria Union of Teachers, the National Teachers Institutes, and the Association of Arabic Studies are in consonance with the provision of the Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria Act, “that a teacher must possess a minimum qualification of Nigeria Certificate in Education and must be registered, certified and licensed.”

According to the lawmakers, there is a need to re-introduce the Teachers Assessment Test to ascertain the quality of teachers. They also stressed the need for the teachers to be inducted by the Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria after pre-service training before being given employment.

The committee further said, “There is a need to strengthen the Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria Act to enable it to monitor the recruitment exercise of teachers at all levels of government.

“There is a need for the establishment of a Teachers Academy by the Federal Government, which would serve as an instrument for a uniform standard for Nigerian teachers that graduated from diverse universities and where procedural and practical teaching would be taught.

“The low remuneration of teachers encourages them to migrate from one place to another. Hence, there is an urgent need to make the teaching profession attractive through the enactment of a Teacher’s Salary Structure as it is obtainable in other professions like Nigerian Maritime Authority, Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, etc., with a view to boosting their morale.”