With the recent statistics on deficit of teachers in the Nigeria’s basic education sector, the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu said on Tuesday in Abuja that the nation would need 1.3million teachers in the next six years.
Speaking at the National Flag off of 2015 Teacher Development Training organised by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Adamu said that Federal Government in addition to the existing intervention through UBEC, was working to recruit and inject 500,000 teachers into the basic education sector across the country.
“This, when completed would place more responsibilities and higher expectations on states and local governments in terms of the role they would be playing in providing more teaching infrastructure and instructional materials,” the Minister said.
The Minister noted that there’s a wide gap between the number of teachers required and the current number available in the basic education sector, said quantity of teacher is of concern to government in the same way quality of paramount importance.
He however lamented the inability of some state governments and some state Universal Basic Education Boards to promptly access the matching grant and other non-conditional grants from UBEC which, according to him should be of great concern to all stakeholders in the education sector.
He appealed to state governors to direct their state Universal Basic Education Boards to access and promptly utilize the funds for rapid educational development noting that the Federal Government was doing its best to reduce or do away with the requirement of matching grants.
