Many teachers in Taraba public schools are not trained, says governor

Agbu Kefas, governor of Taraba, says many teachers in public primary and secondary schools in the state are not well trained. 

Kefas spoke on Thursday during an interview on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme.

He said during his visit to some public schools in the state, many teachers were discovered to be unqualified.

“During my campaign, I promised to give them free education. We are here because we are educated and without education, you can’t do anything and people go into crimes because they are idle and our children are there,” he said.

“If we don’t give them that foundation, you can imagine what the future would look like. I feel they deserve basic education and it should be free because they can’t afford it.

“For teachers, we have to train the teachers, we have to consider their welfare but the first thing is to break the barrier, make the children and their parents interested in school.

“I am accessing the teachers currently. Let me know the number of teachers that are there in Taraba.  We have over 2000 primary schools and over 270 secondary schools but as for the teachers, we have teachers maybe 6000 in total.

“We have to look at the amount they are paid and the level of training they received. We discovered that most of the teachers are not even trained so they can’t even give the children the best. So, I am putting all these together to work out resources to see how we can get it right.

“We have 2,070 public primary schools and more than 16,000  pupils in public secondary schools, 281 government secondary schools.

“In primary schools, we have 541,000 pupils, 16,400 teachers, 281 secondary schools, 66,984 students and 4,062 teachers.”

Speaking on the state of structures in the public schools, the governor said there was not a single mattress for students studying in a boarding school he visited.

“Maintenance culture is a problem in Nigeria. Most of these buildings don’t meet the standards. For one of the Unity schools I visited, I had to direct them to close down the school,” he said.

“If you go to that school, even you will be angry. Just find out, there are more than 500 students in that school but not a single mattress, it is dehumanizing.

“We are making arrangements for alternative places for them and we have constituted a committee to redesign a school and are pulling the school down.”