 It's still the breakfast in Plastivia, Africa. And it's well-featured, so from us right here, we say happy well-featured day to every teacher. And that includes parents in every order person everywhere, really. But a bit of this, we have fantastic guests who would join the conversation this morning to make sense of the day and the educational system in Niger. But you need to understand that it's an annual event. And every year, well-featured days celebrate it globally in the month of October to honor and pay tribute to all teachers. The days recognized to highlight the great role played by teachers and mentors in the lives of students. The theme for well-featured day, that's 2022, is the transformation of education begins with teachers. The celebration of well-featured day, 2022, will be focused on the commitment and calls for action that were recently discussed in Transforming Education Summit. That's for 2022, that was held in September. And according to UNESCO, well-featured day is a day to celebrate how teachers are transforming education, but also to reflect on the support that need to fully deploy, I mean deploy their talent and vocation, and to rethink the way ahead for the profession globally. We have Ola O'Donair, David, who joins us this morning. He's a teacher. O'Donair, it's good to have you join us. Thank you. We also have a professor who joins the conversation, Professor Abyeola Awoshika. She is an educationist. She joins the conversation. Thank you, professor, for joining. Thank you for having me. I start with you, Wright. What are your thoughts on this day? What do you think is the significance, and do we have any reason as a country, Nigeria, to celebrate this day? Absolutely. We always have a reason to celebrate our teachers, because whether you believe it or not, they make all of us professionals. Whether you're in engineering, you're in physics, you're in aeronautics, it takes a teacher to get you there. So we have to celebrate them. It's a pity that Nigerians, most of them, don't appreciate what our teachers do. But many people actually appreciate them. And we have to respect them. We have to honor them. We have to show that we know that they're making a difference in our children's lives. The United Nations has, this year, at its UN General Assembly, had high-level activities around education, called the Transforming Education Summit. Quite interesting, with the focus on different aspects of education, including they had thematic action tracks. One of the thematic action tracks, that's action track three, has to do with teachers' teaching and the teaching profession. They're saying that, for instance, 69 million teachers are needed to achieve universal basic education by the year 2030. From your experience, Professor Prof, do we have enough teachers in the country, in Nigeria today, as we speak? No, no, no. And that is because we have, for decades, relegated the teaching profession to nothingness. Take NUC, the Ministry of Education, when they want to do the cut-off point, they give, like, 100 points for teaching institutions. So if you want to be a teacher, all you have to score is 100 points in jam. But if you want to be a doctor, or you want to be an accountant, it's 200 points. That is reversed because we need our best to be the teachers in this country. That is what Finland did to turn their education system around. They gave their very best to their teachers and, you know, they began to make changes and they turned their educational system to the best in the world. And that is what we need to do. So we don't have enough, all across Africa, we do not have enough teachers. I mean, David, I'm sure you're still with us. Yes, yes, I'm with you. So on this day, the world is celebrating Teacher's Day. Would you like to share your experience with us as a teacher in Nigeria? Yeah, being a teacher is a very great thing. The greatest opportunity I have because I've always wanted to be a teacher and I've always wanted to impact good education into the life of the students and I've been doing that and I'm happy doing it. And I believe that I'm bringing changes into the life of the students, yeah. So, I mean, what has it been like being a teacher in Nigeria? I mean, discuss it, your challenges, you know, your pluses, if there's any. Yeah, there are many challenges in Nigeria concerning the teachers. Like, teachers are meant to be respected, are meant to be treated well. But I noticed that in Nigeria, the treatment given to teachers are not well, it's nothing to write them about. But despite these teachers as they work, they are still striving to do their best, to do their best to deliver their work in the best way. In the best way. And concerning the teachers, there's not enough teachers in Nigeria. There's not enough teachers with the schools, especially the government schools, they need more teachers. I think their statistics is not encouraging. Yeah, there will be, like in some schools, there will not be some subject teachers. Whereby, I've been to a school where they don't have mathematics teacher at all. They've not been doing mathematics. So how will the students graduate well? How would they perform very well in their work, in their studies? So teachers are really, the government really needs to work on their statistics, to know the number of teachers present in each schools so that they can make provisions for teachers. And when students have the best teacher, they will acquire the best knowledge. Yeah, that's my intake on this. Interesting that you're sharing your experience with us as a teacher and the challenges you're having. What do you say to one of the points raised by, you've talked about the fact that teachers are not as enough, you need more teachers. For you, how many students do you have in your classroom? Yeah, in my classroom, per class in my school, we have 35, that's what. Okay, 35 students. Do you think that this is an okay number, I think it should be reduced? Yeah, the number is okay for a government school. For a government school. It's okay for a government school. One of the points raised by Prof is investment in education. And we look at the thematic track three of the United Nations Investment Transformer Education Summit, they talked about investing in our future and that if you invest in teachers, it's investing in the future. You can't invest in teachers that are investing in schools. What are some of the areas in your school, as a case study, you think need investment, at least to make it better for the teachers to do their work? Do you have your gadgets? Do you have access to the internet? Do you have access to research facilities? Are you paid well? I want you to talk about these challenges, my brother. Don't be diplomatic. Tell us what you are facing. Messi has tried to get in through the door, so I'll get in through the roof. What are the, are you paid well? And talk about the challenges. Yeah, concerning that, I would say that the legal government, they are trying. They are trying concerning the payment, they are trying, but due to the hiking prices of the... What do you mean they are trying? Are you government spokesman? I'm not asking you how well are they doing. Are you paid well? Number one, do you have facilities you need as a teacher to perform? You're not the commissioner for education. So don't tell me they are trying. That's what people say. What is your experience, sir? We don't really have the facilities. We don't have the facilities to be the best teacher. Like we are supposed to be receiving internet facilities like gigs, maybe 10 gigs per month, so that we can solve the internet to get the best materials needed to teach the students. But we don't have all these things. We don't have all these things. Even in the schools. In the schools, we don't have gadgets like lack of computers, lack of internet facilities. We don't have them. And these things, they are meant to be in schools because all the students, most of the students, they are computer illiterates. They don't know how to operate computer systems. And we are doing computer in the school. We are teaching computer studies in the school and we don't have computer systems. We don't have anything that we can use to teach a computer. So the government really needs to supply gadgets to government schools because I can't relate it up for private school because they own their school and they do the needs. So for government schools, they need to provide all these. Are you paid well? Are you happy? Would you say you're paid well? I would say I'm paid well. Okay, okay, all right. All right. You seem to be. Prof, before Mr. Kams back in, you talked about the number of teachers. You talked about the bar. That's the bar. The benchmark as far as the qualification for our teachers in the university in Jamf, for instance, are concerned. I have a recent experience with an administrator of a primary, nursery and primary school who is recruiting teachers. My parents were both teachers of blessed memory. They both went, especially mind that, to a proper teacher training institution, a proper teacher training institution. And my dad was so qualified to extend his friends with professors like yourself, but he was okay being a teacher and he didn't want to be a professor or anything teaching university. He was okay. Now, what I see these days is that most of the schools are going in for graduates, people who have no certificate or qualification in education, so they're not going in for the NCE holders. They're not going in for those who studied education in university. They're going in for graduates in different fields who have probably, it's prof with us, please. I think we lost prof. Do we still have prof? Okay. So I've noticed that they're going in for those who have maybe a 2-1, at least second class, upper or first class students in different fields who are necessarily trained to teach. Why would you say that is the case? Prof, are you there? Okay, it seems we do not have prof with us. My brother, what are your thoughts on this? Do you have a background in education and do you find that maybe the schools are looking for people who are qualified as opposed to those who maybe have a background in education academically? Yes, I have a background in education and the schools are looking for those who have a background in education. Even for those who doesn't have a background in education, they are advised through courses in education like PGTE, other professional courses, attendance for education. What can be done, in your opinion, to improve the welfare of teachers and make it easy and enjoyable and better for them to do their work? Yes. What can be done is that the teachers should pay attention, they should pay more attention to teachers. In such a way that there will be like allowances, like browsing allowances, feeding allowances, apart from the salary, so that the teacher will be very, very comfortable to teach and stress free. So if they can do that, if they can do that, the teacher will be comfortable, they will be happy to do their work diligently. Alright. There's a funny one here, bizarre one. Do you feel safe as a teacher? At any point in time, do you feel threatened by your students? Maybe they're going to beat you up or something. Maybe those who are involved in cultism, in cultism. No, no. We don't have such in mind. I'm always friendly to my students. I'm a student's love. But have you heard of anything like that in any of the other schools that students involved in cultism are threatening teachers? Yes, I've heard of that. Because in some schools, students are involved in cultism, like bringing in knights to school, stabbing themselves, shooting themselves. I've heard of that. Alright, alright. Well, we have to go now. Thank you so much, Ola Odunayo, David, for being part of us this morning. And happy teacher's day to you. Thank you, Jesus. Alright, alright. That's good. We, unfortunately, weren't able to connect with Professor Biola Awashika. We're hoping that we have... We will have a way to have her again. Again, right. And that talk was not very favorable. Yeah, we need to have her again. Maybe tomorrow. Merci. So, the school was set up specifically in Pothaka. Pothaka is a beautiful city. A picture of a soldier flogging certain students in his schools called Aparah Secondary School. So all of us were... People were at Bizeq on radio, why would a teacher with a soldier go to school and flog certain students? And then we got to find out there are other schools around, even like a federal government college near the military barrack school of Boricam. They also used soldiers. They invited them to come and discipline the students. Some teachers started calling into the radio program saying, hey, that's it. They can't handle the students. they can't handle the students, they feel endangered. And I could not understand, I said, why would we allow secondary school students intimidate you? They said, these guys, I had to call them and stuff. And teachers kept convincing me that, if I wear their shoes, I'll fear for my life. Well, so I think that that's on the one hand. But you also have schools where you have the military, like military school schools, right? One of them I attended. And those who discipline us on the military school. Yes, I was in the military school. And those who actually would punish us were the military officers. Now, if you're very conversant with the military school, you know that they call them the ROPs. My, oh my. The ROPs are those who actually punish you for offense. And the offense were not, I mean, so if you actually fault anything, I mean, if you come late to school, you have to work on your knees on the coater. They were really, you know, very hard and harsh military training. So, what I was looking for, the teachers are also endangered. That's another thing we need to look at. Yeah, they're afraid that some students will test the message out if it will deal with you. So, that's why we're thinking that we have Professor Sohan. We definitely have this conversation some other time. It's an interesting time we're leaving. 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