 I bring you the very warm greetings and felicitations of President Mohammed Buhari who had agreed to be here in person and would have been present but for the fact that today also happens to be a day in which the Federal Executive Council is considering the budget and he had to preside over that meeting and he's still presiding over that meeting as we speak. So he sends his warm greetings and his congratulations to you all. October 5th is a very special date. It is the date that we celebrate the very best of us and perhaps the most important persons in our nation, teachers, those men and women who daily go into our classrooms to banish ignorance, to imbue knowledge, to inspire and nurture the minds of millions of young people one school day at a time. It is the day in the year when we say what we should say every day to our teachers. Thank you. Thank you for your patience, thank you for your commitments, thank you for your sacrifice, for your hard work amidst many many challenges. No society can grow beyond its educational attainments. One of the major differences between healthy, well, well-functioning and prosperous societies and poorer societies is education. We are so much of our well-being as a nation to our educators at every level. Indeed, our future as a nation is so heavily dependent on education and our educators. This explains why the federal government is determined to return teachers' teaching and the teaching profession to their rightful places. To this end, we are fully implementing the professional teaching and teacher qualification framework, the standards that have been set that will invariably impact on education outcomes and teacher performance at the preschool, basic, secondary and tertiary levels. We are also developing a verifiable database of teachers in Nigeria. Already the teachers registration council of Nigeria, the TRCN, has registered 2,108,342 teachers and has licensed also 1,250,000 teachers. Our new teachers policy is already being implemented at the federal level and in some states, and I'd like to urge states that have not done so to do so immediately, the gains are already showing. The theme of this year's teacher's day is the transformation of education begins with teachers. The transformation of education begins with teachers. It emphasizes the importance of teachers to educational transformation, but it also introduces the important responsibility that teachers themselves have, that is to be at the cutting edge of advancements in education and especially the use of technology and modern teaching methods. Education must respond to the dynamism, the speed of development and the massive changes that are taking place in society. Educators must understand the skills required to take full advantage of a world that is almost completely dependent on technology. In addition to listening, education today includes writing, it includes ideation, it includes imagining and critical thinking skills. It is no longer merely learning by wrote. So the role of teachers in mediating this transition to the digital age has never been more important as it is today. We live in one of the most rapidly advancing moments in human history. Technology is redefining every aspect of our lives at a dizzying speed. And those of us who do not keep pace will be left behind. This is true for nations. It is true for our children and the young people under our watch today, as is this true for teachers. But in spite of how intimidating and disrupting the new waves of technology appear to be, they are sharing opportunities for greater efficiency, increased productivity and growth. We only need to rise to its demands. But what does this mean for us as teachers in a changing world? And when I say us, I also mean myself because I also started teaching in 1981, which is about 41 years ago today. So consider me one of you. We are charged with a generation with a strong sense of curiosity and independent thinking. Digital natives born into a fast and free flow of information with infinite potentials for learning just about anything. It will become increasingly difficult to provide the learning, the instruction and the guidance that our calling as teachers require of us without integrating technology into our pedagogy and doing so at scale. Teaching has always required a scientific approach. We have always had generic and customized ways of developing learning objectives, of choosing methods of instruction, of designing systems for feedback and assessment. What we have to do today is to see how these existing frameworks can guide our adoption of new technology and enhance the learning experiences of our students. What instructional technologies can we incorporate into our learning plans? Can we, can audio visual, for instance, and digital media provide more clarity for students and stimulate their imagination a bit more? Can online curriculums foster collaborations between teachers and students beyond the classroom? The truth is that we have a huge opportunity in our hands to leapfrog development in education through technology. But to do this we must continue to invest in expanding our capacity as teachers. We cannot integrate technology successfully as urgently as we need to without training and equipping teachers. I promise you that the government will always continue to champion this and that it is the role of government to plant the seeds and to provide the resources for a lot of the changes that we speak of, including the private sector. Under the Empire scheme we provided a technology platform that enabled quick and efficient training for large numbers of teachers in every local government. Collaborating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Oracle Academy, Microsoft Academy, and the IBM, it was a successful test case for the readiness of Nigerian teachers to run smart classrooms. And this was done and we showed that it was possible to expand the integration of technology in our educational systems. We have also launched the Nigerian learning passport, a digital learning platform with online mobile and offline capability that enables continuous access to quality education. Technology has infinitely expanded the opportunities for teachers to develop themselves professionally and to broaden their career trajectories. There are tons of materials and courses available online for aiding teacher professional development. The International Development Research Centre, for example, has a collaborative teacher's guide for remote learning that's available to teachers globally. A comprehensive resource material that positions teachers to leverage technology for continued engagement with their students beyond the classroom, providing a resilient option during school closures and beyond. Across Africa, there are over 200 egg tech startups providing impactful homegrown innovations to break the gap in education. In Nigeria, one serial entrepreneur, for instance, Sim Shagaya, has what is called the U-Lesson, and the U-Lesson provides a wide range of educational content for primary and secondary school students in line with the curriculum of five countries, Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, United States, and the United Kingdom. The lessons are delivered in transferable data that can be plugged into and used on a range of devices, including computers, tablets, and mobile phones. We also have Eduquia. I'm sure many of us might be familiar with some of these software. Eduquia, which in 2021 raised the sum of about $3.5 million in pre-seed funding, and they have been working to build a pan-African classroom that empowers parents, students and teachers by democratizing access to high-quality education. All these platforms provide a collaborative environment for teachers, for tech entrepreneurs, and policymakers to improve access for teachers and students alike. We must engage with these homegrown solutions. We provide the feedback and adapt them so that they can fit into the peculiar circumstances of our schools and our own development in technology. Whereas our previous pedagogy inadvertently produced students who were merely good stores of crammed information. The demands of the future require that we position our young people to think for themselves, to absorb and process the wealth of information that's available to them, and to tease out useful knowledge. But we cannot give what we don't have. So we must stay on the cutting edge of research, learning and development. And we can only guide our students in the direction where we ourselves have been. This is what our calling as teachers requires us to do. Let us plug into the universal global knowledge pool. They are countless programs available. We can take advantage of them and they allow for cross-pollination of ideas between teachers all over the world. Let us reach for every resource available to us to better equip ourselves for the challenging and rewarding task of preparing ourselves and our young people to meet the demands of a changing world. I congratulate you as you continue to strive and push the boundaries of this most honorable profession. You have our continued support and our endless admiration. Thank you very much for your service. Happy World Teacher's Day and God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.