The director-general of the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI), Musa Maitafsir, has accused President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime and state governors of using quacks to train Nigerian teachers.
The institute called on the regime to sanction illegal teachers’ training
institutions in the country.
Mr Maitafsir made the call on Friday in Abuja on the sidelines of the ‘2022 Nationwide Capacity Building Teacher Training Workshop’ organised by the NTI.
“Many unauthorised organisations have hijacked the training of teachers at the expense of mandated and professional institutions in the country,” the NTI boss lamented. “There is a proliferation of private firms with no business in education and mandate to train teachers, but patronised by state and federal government agencies in training teachers at the detriment of the institutions established by laws.”
The NTI director-general warned that leaving the training of teachers in the hands of “intruders in the business of teachers’ production” could spell doom for the education sector.
“Over the years, the institute has been active in training in line with the mandate and federal government act of 1978 that established it. We have designed to train over 2,000 Nigerian teachers this year,” added Mr Maitafsir. “They will be introduced to the techniques of learning recoveries through Basic Education Support Funds from UBEC.”
He disclosed that 2,000 teachers from Kebbi and Sokoto had already received similar training by the institute in collaboration with the Commonwealth in 2021.
Mr Maitafsir also mentioned that 100 teachers would receive training on digital literacy this year, apart from 148 teachers already trained by the
institute in collaboration with the federal ministry of education.
The NTI director-general stated that the institute had organised a train-the-trainers capacity-building workshop for distance learning system centre managers in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.
“The same training will be extended to over 500 teachers in this
type of training this year,” Mr Maitafsir stated.
