In any decent society or country, teachers are highly honoured and celebrated. In other words, teachers are the bedrock for social, political and economic transformation. They are the strong pillars upon which any society or country is built.
Over the years, the Nigerian teachers have been relegated to the lowest background. The decay in the education system relating to the quality of learning and welfare of teachers have led to the yet approved and implementation of a special Teachers Salary Scale (TSS) as announced by the President of Nigeria, Muhumadu Buhari during the commemoration of the World Teachers Day in October 2020.
The news of the approval was greeted with cheers and applause as it was hoped to be a start in the journey of rebuilding Nigeria’s education system which is current at different levels of rot. This development was for all registered teachers in Nigeria and not just some select or federal teachers.
But sadly, this has not been implemented either as a result of longer bureaucracy, lack of political will, and paucity of funds which have stalled implementation.
In this article, we shall take a look at the new salary structure for Nigerian teachers, delay in implementation and its adverse effect on the already bastardized educational system in Nigeria.
The new salary structure is expected to make the least paid teacher in the public service to earn between N150,000 and N300,00 monthly as against the current salary of about N49,000.
The special package approved by President Buhari also includes the building of low-cost houses for teachers in rural areas, the sponsorship of teachers, and prompt payment of salaries and timely promotion to eliminate stagnation. This is in addition to the Teachers Conversion Programme (TCP) and ICT training to mitigate the current dearth of qualified teachers in the school system.
The president also approved the increase in rural allowances, science allowances, and hazard allowances among others. Most of these promises made by the president were part of the demands presented by the NUT president Nasir Idris.
“We have actually been fighting for some of the things the president promised to do for teachers. For instance, the elongation of years. We have been agitating for 65 years retirement age or 40 years by service and one of the reasons for the agitation is that we discovered that about 26 states did not recruit a single teacher for over 20 years,” he had said.
President Buhari directed the ministry of education to ensure an accelerated implementation in collaboration with states/local governments, the office of the head of civil service of the federation, the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission and other relevant agencies in the system to enthrone a culture of competence, discipline, dedication, increased learning outcomes and better service delivery in the education sector in Nigeria.
Recently, the teachers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) embarked on an indefinite strike to press for the implementation of non-payment of their promotion arrears from 2015, backlogs of annual increment, 25-month minimum wage arrears and other allowances.
Added to this sad development is that many states in Nigeria are not even paying the N30,000 minimum wage and some that claim to pay are only doing so partially, leaving out teachers in local government areas.
Looking at from the global perspective, Nigeria has done so badly in this regard ranking 161 in the 2020 United Nations Development Programme’s ranking of countries based on the Human Development Index (HDI). This is indeed very sad and not healthy for our educational system.
Its Effects On the Educational System in Nigeria
The danger posed by the non implementation of the new salary structure for public school teachers are enormous.
- Our educational system will continue to suffer as there will be no commitments and dedication to duty among the poor paid teachers in the country.
- The non implementation of the new salary structure for Nigerian teachers will continue to be unattractive to the best brains which will in turn lead to brain drains in the system.
- The standard of education will continue to fall or deteriorate to an alarming rate as only frustrated individuals will pick up teaching jobs.
In summary, while these incentives for public teachers in Nigeria may offer a ray of hope to the education sector, we urge the government to do the needful by urgently implementing the new salary for quick revitalization of the entire system.
We must not play politics with it so as to save our educational system from total collapse. “A stitch in time, they say saves nine”. Teachers must have their rewards both on earth and in Heaven.