BY:
MUDASSIR ALIYU
YUNUSA
NTA ZARIA
mudassiray@gmail.com
Education is recognized internationally
as key to human, social and economic development. It is the backbone for
societal transformation, that is why Education should be given special attention
as a prerequisite of positive future of all societies. In Nigeria the
management of Education falls under
concurrent legislative list where all tiers of Government are mandated to
supervise the provision and quality assurance of Education. Federal Ministry of
Education, State Ministry of Education and Local Education Authority (LEA) are
deliberately established to provide and enhance qualitative Education at all level.
In most cases Primary schools are mainly supervised by Local Government with Education
Secretary as a head, Secondary schools by State government with Commissioner of
Education as Officer in charge, while Minister is a general overseer of the
federal ministry of education which is mainly concern with tertiary
institutions and universities respectively.
Conventionally, Local Education Authority
is purposely created to supervise the activities of Primary Schools as well as
proper control and smooth running of the affairs of teachers which include
appointment, promotion and discipline; payment of remunerations (salary and
allowances); overall management of primary education, quality control and
executing primary educational plans.
It is obvious that the promotion of
Primary School teachers has been experiencing serious setback in many States of
the federation. In Kano the delay has became hindrance to the prosperity and
carrier success of primary school teachers. It is revealed that for long many
teachers and non teaching staff of Local education Authority were unable to be
promoted to the next grade level, the previous promotions of primary school
teachers in Kano as captured by many newspapers took place in 2007 and 2013,
this clearly proved that all Local Education Officers are ought to attain two
or three level higher than their present grade level if the promotion would
have been actually and promptly taking place in view of three years interval as
laid down by civil service rules. It is also interesting to note that in Kano for
long majority of primary school teachers
are hanging on the same grade level receiving the same salary and allowances
(if any) despite the series of economic fluctuations and social changes that
happened within the stipulated period. For e.g from 2007 to date the petroleum
pump price per litre was N65 then rose to N97, dropped to N87 and now the price
is N145. The Naira/Dollar exchange rate volatility has also deepened the
welfare crisis facing by the masses especially lower income earners. Apart from
this we all know the prices of food stuffs and other necessity commodities have
considerably skyrocketed, but Government is still paying same salary to workers
particularly Primary School teachers who are always at the receiving end.
In respond to the above, Kano State
Government set a committee to look into the matter and directed the State Universal
Primary Education Board (SUBEB) to carry out promotion exercise in order to advance
all the stagnated Officers that are due for promotion for the period onwards, huge
amount of money is given by the state government for the exercise. Quite
rightly the board responded immediately but unfortunately the exercise is full
of anomalies and irregularities to the extent that some that are suppose to be
promoted are either mistakenly omitted or
deliberately neglected. The situation is highly worrisome especially when it was
exposed that some teachers are forced to give out money as bribe to induce
those at the hemp of the promotion affairs to put their names in the promotion
list. It is also revealed that some stakeholders in Primary Board are collecting
money from teachers to include and capture them in the payroll after they (teachers)
were privileged to be promoted. It is obvious in my Local Government (1 out of
44 LG), over 100 Education Officers that are due and suppose to be promoted
base on merit but were completely excluded from the promotion exercise for the
flimsy reason of been omitted, but the reality was that many of them were
deliberately ignored because of their failure give out money or to do some kind
of underground movement as an inducement which I am sure the appropriate
authorities (especially the Governor who committed huge amount of money for the
exercise) are not aware about all this blunder.
I suggest that special task force should
be set by the State Government to look deeply into this matter so that the
exercise and conduct of promotion in
Local education will be accurate and acceptable. It will be better if the process of evaluating
the performance and functioning of workers should be adopted to find out staff
worthy for promotion, this could be done through writing exams and interviews
in the course of promoting teachers the way some Federal institutions are
doing. With this I am optimistic that the principle of fair play, transparency,
justice and impartiality will reign in our Educational sector particularly in
Primary Schools.
MUDASSIR write from NTA Zaria.
