Stop treating teachers as "Libya slaves" - Professor cries out

- The pro-chancellor of Crawford University says that teachers are not to be treated as slaves

- He also mentioned that acts of disrespect and ridicule towards teachers should go with punishment
- He also raised an alarm that teachers are paid just between N15, 000 -N20, 000 in many private schools 


 Prof Peter Okebukola, the pro-chancellor, Crawford University, Igbesa, Ogun, on Thursday, December 14, admonished that teachers should no more be humiliated.
The News Agency of Nigeria's (NAN) reports, that the university is an establishment of Apostolic Faith Church, West and Central Africa.

 According to Okebukola, treating teachers as if they are less than humans is an act that should be severely punished. He said: “We need to penalise, name and shame all employers, public and private, who treat teachers in Nigeria like `Libya slaves’.

“Until the day when these five strategies I will mention are implemented, Nigeria’s education system will continue to grope in the dark and national development will fall deep into an abysmal pit.
“Over the last eight years, studies have shown conclusively that the master key which opens the intricate door to quality education is the teacher; the success story is the quality training and welfare of teachers.
“Our findings published has shown that if we engage quality teachers and provide good welfare scheme for them, more than half of the problems facing the education system would have been solved’’  

“In countries like Finland and Korea, only the very best are admitted for teacher training and when they graduate, they are paid well and are the envy of other professionals.
“In Nigeria, the typical faculties of education of a university admit largely the dregs from the pool of UTME applicants. In 2017, application for courses in education and agriculture were the fewest.
“Most students want to read medicine, law engineering and what they consider as prestige courses. Those that studied education are like horses that are forced to the river to drink graduates as teachers.
“These set are severally shallow in the subject they are to teach. I was alarmed to hear that what a graduate teacher earns per month in some private secondary schools is about N20,000 and N15,000,’’
“Firstly, we need to completely revamp the curriculum of all teacher training institutions, including Nigeria Teachers’ Institute (NTI), all Colleges of Education and all Faculties of Education in our Universities.
“The curriculum should have severe reduction in the number of education courses and huge increase in the courses for the teaching subjects; this can be achieved in 2018.
“Second is to suspend all sandwich and distance-learning teachers training programmes since this is the hotbed for training mediocre teachers. The third is on teachers’ recruitment.
“Only properly trained and certificated teachers holding Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) should be recruited; lastly is to punish those that are treating teachers unfairly.’’
From the reports gathered, the 9th convocation of Crawford University has 230 graduates and 40 postgraduates.
  Earlier, Ayodele Odeogbola who teaches at Abeokuta Grammar School, Ogun state, and Itodo Anthony who teaches at Gateway Excel College, Otukpa, Benue state, are the Nigerian teacher that made the list of 50 shortlisted teachers.
  The prize, which was conceived in 2013, was put together by Varkey foundation with the aim of rewarding one exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession as well as to shine spotlight on the important role teachers play in the society.
The prize comes with a monetary reward of $1 million for one out of the 50 shortlisted teachers.