As a teacher, I always look at issues from educational perspective while at the same time taking into cognizance the overwhelming effects of other social, political and economic ramifications in analyzing issues. Today, my attention swerves to the the educational plane of Northern Nigeria most especially Zamfara state, which is obviously caught up in the magnetic force of Bermuda Triangle and it is currently pulled down to a dangerous altitude. It is a disheartening situation that education as a fundamental human enterprise for prosperous life and development is pushed to the background in my dear state. This is not politicking or partisan criticism but an objective analysis of fact.
The elementary level of education (I mean the primary schools) has been plagued by undue neglect. Most schools especially in rural areas are understaffed and their remuneration is a chicken feed. Instructional materials are also not provided and when a teacher demands for them, the Local Government Education Authority (LGEA) would always tell him to "improvise" as if everything can be improvised from simple and affordable materials. By the way, with the obsessive desire today to recycle every dung and trash, even an empty can of Multina becomes a purchasable item, not thrown in the dustbin. The under-staffing of rural primary schools resulted from poor payment of teachers because transfer of teachers from the overstaffed primary school in the towns and cities is not implementable as it is hard to sacrifice one's complementary businesses in the cities or towns by which he manages to keep soul and body together for a meager salary. The transfer of teachers is thus manipulated and rendered void.
There is a school I know with only headmaster and a teacher as its staff. This is because state government has made some substantial infrastructural progress building several more primary schools but the poor working condition of teachers in terms of remuneration, promotion and other incentives are left unattended and some of these newly-built schools are only empty edifices. It is true that conducive learning atmosphere is of great motivational factor for teaching and learning, yet, it is not an indispensable factor for teaching and learning process. There were/are many open space schools that had produced good students under the tutelage of well-motivated teachers. Today, despite the political show off of millennium classrooms the standard of education sinks low because the government has continued to misplace priorities. It fails to allocate to the education the required 25% fund as recommended by UNESCO. This spelt doom for education in the state owing to the government’s budgets which doled to the sector just 5% of its total budget allocation. The in-service training is unheard-of to many teachers though its importance cannot be overemphasized as it offers teachers the opportunity to update and develop their knowledge and skills. However, many a teacher in the state has never attended any workshop or seminar.
Thus, the rot at the foundation level is allowed to thrive and creep upward to post-primary schools and tertiary levels. The fresh students enrolled every year in secondary schools exhibit almost a total eclipse of education in the state. Teachers in secondary schools are put between the devil and deep blue sea when it comes to handling such students. The dilemma is that the students have missed a lot, so much that many students cannot even write their names and those who manage to scribble it, have only memorized the letters in their names and the teachers in every must strictly adhere to the secondary school syllabus. In this situation, the students are only exposed to strange babbling making no sense whatsoever. When they are assessed during third term promotion examination, we often find that 50-60 percent deserved to be demoted, but is there any justification for it? Even if there is such justification, any principal who dare attempt it, would do it at the peril of his own school. Beside the fear of mass transfer of students from his school, even a poor ignorant political loyalist whose son is demoted can threaten the seat of principal. Turning to the other way, allowing the students to move on freely from one class to another is consequentially dangerous as the school would be labelled as producer of bad products. A dilemma indeed! Thus, the last year's WAEC SSCE result index for the May/June 2015, which places Zamfara at 36th position, languishing behind Jigawa, Gombe, Katsina, Kebbi, Bauchi and Sokoto states triggers no surprise.
The worse part of it is that, the situation rolls into a vicious circle which propels such students to the Colleges of Education where lecturers are compelled by unfortunate necessity to employ let-my-people-go syndrome because failing 90% of the students raises questions on their instructional efficiency. So, the products of this haphazard metamorphosis would finally beget a generation of unprofessional teachers. The future is bleak unless we unite to revive the crumbling hope. Let's us acknowledge the fact that, a quack doctor is less dangerous than a bad teacher.
