The Borno Universal Education Board, says it discovered some primary school teachers with fake certificates in its ongoing screening exercise, the News Agency of Nigeria has reported.
Dr Shettima Kulima, Executive Chairman of the board, announced the discovery while briefing newsmen on activities of the board in the past one year on Wednesday in Maiduguri.
Kulima, who did not give the number of teachers involved, said the board also came across teachers with genuine certificates but lacked the capacity to teach.
According to him, there is a teacher, who tendered genuine certificate of BA in English but does not know the past tense of ‘stand’.
“This so called graduate said the past tense of stand is ‘standed’.
“Another teacher said the past tense of ‘run’ is ‘runned’ instead of ran.
“We are committed to training and retraining of our teachers but some of those teachers are not even trainable, talk less of retraining them,’’ Kulima said.
He hinted that the state government had approved the matching grant for universal basic education projects in the state.
The executive chairman added that due to the CONVID-19, the board, in collaboration with organisations like UNICEF and Save the Children Fund, had started learning-at-home programme through radio for pupils.
He said that solar powered transistor radio had been provided to be shared to most vulnerable in the communities as part of the programme.
Kulima said that members of the School Base Management Committees (SBMC) will be involved in the distribution of the transistors so that it would reach the targeted people.
He lauded the Federal Government for the reintroduction of history as a subject in schools but said the state was faced with the challenge of getting teachers for the subject.
According to him, teachers handling social studies cannot teach history.
“The irony is that a history teacher can teach social studies and government but a social studies teacher cannot teach history,’’ he said.
Newsdiaryonline recalls that several states especially in northern Nigeria states have had to grapple with the issue of poor teacher qualifications.In Kaduna state for instance, it was a hot potato of some sort as the Governor Nasir El-Rufai defiantly sacked unqualified teachers earlier on.(With reports by NAN)
