 As the world today marks Teacher's Day, those in the noble profession have been enjoying to join hands together and build the education sector in Nigeria to an enviable standard that can compete globally. Correspondent Uyime Elijah in this report takes a look at the teacher's welfare and the possibility of keeping up with impacting the education sector in Nigeria. Academic professionals all over the world no doubt gain prominence from the four walls of the classrooms. Today the world celebrates Teacher's Day to recognize, evaluate and enhance the status of teachers around the globe. A cross-section of Nigerians says that teachers need to be given the rights they deserve as they are the pillars of nation building. If you are going to put 20 people that are passionate about education, some people don't care about the salaries that is fine but you can't evaluate and conclude your result on that. There are some people also that they are passionate about that but nevertheless that is what they do for a living. You cannot teach when you don't have passion for it because it's not easy to like mentor somebody's as child. So by doing that you have to be passionate about it. Not them do the normal thing. Teacher they say they are what in heaven, it's not in heaven, it's here. They won't be like us. Not them do something new for them, for their life. Nigerian teachers have over the years raised an alarm over their poor welfare and salary debt owed them by some state governors. This purpose-driven profession takes so much livelihood out of them to benefit others as they live below the impact they give. If you look at the team for this year's celebration, you would say the team is the transformation of education begins with teachers. You would discover that it is only the teachers that can transform education completely because they are the drivers that are driving the vehicle of education all over the nation and the team could not have come at a better time than now. When you discover there's a global economic turn down globally and I want to believe teachers can transform education all over the nation, Nigeria inclusive, provided the government is ready to invest in them, provided the government is ready to improve their working condition, provided the government is ready to better their welfare. I want us to note the fact that this transformation we are talking about cannot be done in isolation from the living and working conditions of teachers. Fees are fees, where they work, their condition of service and everything. Teachers can transform education if they are treated well. Many Nigerians argue that the current budget for education is far below expectation for a country with about 10.5 million out of school children, the world's highest number. A data from 2017 shows the downturn trend in education spending in Nigeria. In 2021, the budget allocation was 5.14 percent, a 0.01 percent increase from 2020. This year's team is giving more responsibility to teachers as transformative agents, but the reality in the country where the cost of living keeps rising and the take home cannot actually take the teachers home. Much is left to be desired. Weyime Elijah, PlusDV News, Lagos. Well joining us now via Zoom to discuss teachers' matters is Dr. Gide Johnson from the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Lagos, and educationist, Professor Abyola Awashika. Good evening to you. You're welcome. Well, the role of teachers cannot be over emphasized in any nation. So how would you describe their remuneration, particularly in Nigeria? Perhaps you want to compare to any other scenario that you're privy to. Have information about. Let me start with you, Professor Awashika. All right. Absolutely. Thank you so much. We all know our teachers are doing wonderful things. We know the condition of our country and we know that they're sacrificing themselves for our children. And we need to help them. The federal government wants to try to throw money at it, but really, we don't need to throw money at it. What we need are people who are qualified and able to teach our children like Finland. Finland puts their best forward to teach. If you don't have a master's degree, they don't even begin to talk to you. And it transformed their system by doing that. Unfortunately for us in Nigeria, we have chosen to put our first forward. We say if you want to teach, you can do with a hundred points scored in jam whereas other professions, you have to score about 200 to 100. This is not good enough. All right. Well, let me just take you up on something you just said. You said one of the errors our government has committed is just throwing money at it. How do you mean? Because teachers are not well paid in this country. That's one of the problems that the education sector is having. Teachers are not well paid. Yes, we know. But some of the thing that the government is doing right now, for example, they're giving scholarships to people who want to go to colleges of education or educational institutions. Well, that is throwing money at it. But who are you giving the scholarship to? Is it the guy who scores 100 points in jam or the guy who scored 250 points in jam? So we cannot just say, all right, we're going to give you a scholarship, but we need to watch who is in the classroom with our children. All right. Let me go to the gentleman. What is your take on teachers' remuneration in Nigeria? There's no doubt that the degree of comprehensive analysis of teachers have been in Nigeria with what obtains another client. You agree with me that teachers have been paid peanuts. Apart from being paid peanuts, the enabling environment is not provided for them, for them to try as compared to what we have in the 60s, compared to what you have in the 70s and the early 80s. The whole environment has completely changed. As I've pointed out, at that particular point in time, people teaching us in a passion, the best of the site want to go into teaching. However, the story has changed. The general societal view of who the teacher is. We have this common thing that the rewards of teachers are in heaven, as we have made the teaching profession, not to be attracted to even the best of the society because the condition does not take care of their business. All right. Let's move over to the system, the current system that we have that we currently operate. What's your view of that? That's the 6334 system. How do you see that? Is it working? Has it worked? Well, it's because we didn't let it work. That's because we all want tertiary education. We don't want technical education. The three that are supposed to split when they get to JS3 doesn't split anymore. Everybody now stands in line to go to a university, whereas there are opportunities in other places to go through the polytechnic, to go through the innovative enterprise institutions and still get back to being a wonderful professional in your field. What would you say corrupted as structure? Why is the implementation not as it should have been? Well, unfortunately, the fact that the government does not pay the same to a graduate of a polytechnic and a graduate of a university causes everyone to think, okay, a college of education is out, which are not going to get as much as a graduate. Polytechnics are out. IEIs are out because they're not going to get as much as a graduate. So when you have an HND starting at level seven and a BS is starting at level eight, you already have caused that system not to work. Okay, Dr. Jida Johnson, let me come to you with the next question. Well, on that question, I think that the problem starts with us paying attention to the first level in the secondary school, the termination on the first level, for those that want to acquire technical education, those that will provide the labor force for business like bricklayers, technicians, electricians, all of this. Government has not made any investment in technical schools. What investment have we made? Now if you are involved in the building sector or in the construction sector, you will see that majority of this labor have been imported from Republic of Togo. If you are looking for the pet bricklayer, the pet tyler, they are coming from being in Republic of Togo, Ivory Coast and the rest of it, because they have the support system. So in the 6334 educational model that was introduced on the upper bank, the Minister of Education, the quicker component after your three years in secondary school, which is technical education, leave service or speak to it. It was rendered useless as a result of your system in its entirety. To add to what Prabha said, we have also laid emphasis on satisfaction, tertiary education satisfaction, while downplaying this technical education. And I tell you this, majority of Nigerians are traveling out of Nigeria. In 1983-84, we are and we don't check out. Now we have JAPA, a lot of Nigerians that are checking out now are doing these technical jobs that they could not do here to go and learn it abroad. Well, time would not allow us to explore further. But let me ask you the last question. Again, I'll go back to the prof and then you wrap it up. Dr. Johnson, how better can the government encourage teachers besides financial motivation? Well, first of all, don't tell them their reward is in heaven. It's here. So motivate them with money, motivate them with training, motivate them with promotion, and make them happy. Because if your teachers are happy, the children will be happy. Okay, so Dr. Johnson, your take on that. One, there should be a comprehensive national policy on health care for teachers. Three, if you have a better working condition, you need to be put to the classrooms to look at the classrooms and the staff room of the teachers. Does it measure up to turn that you want to give to people that will impact future leaders? And lastly, the retirement benefit. Teachers don't have to go through here to collect their retirement benefits. We provide all of this. You don't need to throw money like a point out. I assure you that we have better teachers in the system. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Thank you. I do hope that at the end of the day, all these judges would amount to something because I know that governments should be working towards ensuring that by the next year, when we celebrate the teachers, their lot would have improved and the education sector in the country would have also been transformed. Thank you so much, Dr. Jida Johnson, for your time. And Professor Abyola Woshika, thank you so much for your insight on this very germane issue. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.