Nigeria: Basic education suffers from lack of 277,537 basic level teachers, says UBEC

“Our hope is that with the current reforms that are being put in place where you attract the best candidates into the teaching profession and compensate them adequately, the narrative will change."

In Nigeria, the schools are suffering from a lack of over 277,537 basic level teachers, revealed National Personal Audit (NPA), according to a report by Nairametrics.

Reportedly signed by Hamid Bobboyi earlier on Sunday, the Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) said that the audit was conducted on private and public education in the country, representing a shortage of basic level teachers.

Bobboyi further said that the audit displayed that over 53% of teachers were qualified to teach in private schools, whereas, in public schools over 73% of teachers were considered qualified.

“Our hope is that with the current reforms that are being put in place where you attract the best candidates into the teaching profession and compensate them adequately, the narrative will change", he said.

He mentioned that the Education Ministry of the country is also planning to tackle the shortage, and also mentioned that the country needs to acknowledge the challenges and prioritize teacher training for public education.

He further dsiclosed that UBEC will allocate around 10% of the country's Consolidated Revenue Fund to the Teacher Professional Development for the improvement of the quality of teachers.

He added, "we remain the biggest teacher development agency in the country, not even the National Teachers’ Institute or any other agency. UBEC’s 10 per cent of the entire amount that is received from the Consolidated Revenue Fund is designated for Teacher Professional Development, through the States’ Universal Basic Education Boards. That is something that is very important for us to realise that we pump in a minimum of N10 billion every year for Teacher Professional Development in this country".