The Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has advised the new Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman to prioritise and invest in teacher education as a first step to reshape the sector.
COEASU President, Dr. Smart Olugbeko, stated this while speaking with the press at a two-day workshop, organised by the Union in conjunction with the Committee of Provosts In Nigeria.
The theme of the workshop is “Leadership Skills Development for Effective Industrial Relations in the College of Education System,” and is aimed at equipping members to have greater capacity to deal with issues of industrial concern and ensure peace on campuses.
“What we have been doing is making government to actually take teacher education seriously. We have made different official positions to government on how teacher education could be repositioned.
“One of the ways of getting it done is to get our institutions well funded to be able to produce quality teachers because if you do not produce quality teachers you do not have teachers with capacity to be able to teach at those levels and if government has not been able to fund our Colleges appropriately then what comes out of that is our inability to produce teachers of high quality.
“Therefore, the first thing government needs to do is to take teacher education seriously, funding teacher education in such a way that it will be able to produce capable teachers that will make our schools to have quality teaching and learning.
“We will be meeting with the Minister for the first time, It’s a courtesy call and we are not going to compound him with issues but we want to acquaint him with the need for him to take teacher education seriously because when we are talking about ministry of education, ordinarily it is all about teaching. We want to make the Minister realise that his primary function is to make teaching and learning effective in Nigeria,” he said.
On the issue of job racketeering, he said COEASU as a union has been in the forefront of actually confronting the impunity and is not part of it.
“What we discovered is that since the introduction of IPPIS in 2020 it has been practically impossible for provost or management or councils of our institutions to Carry out employment without interference from the Head of Service.
“So for now, even when we have staff or lecturers that have left the system, the Provost cannot replace them and what we do have a situation whereby the Provost will to apply to Head of Service that they want to replace the staff that left.
“But you discover that some of these applications will stay with the Head of Service for even one or two years without any reply and in the course of doing that we discovered that even at the end of the day when the permission to employ is given it always followed a kind of a waiver that there shouldn’t be advertisement and as a union we have been opposing this vehemently,” he added.
For his part, the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Prof. Paulinus Chijioke Okwelle, said the Commission is continuously engaging the the government to ensure a conducive atmosphere for teachers in the country.
“We have been meeting, just yesterday it was our turn to brief the Minister on the affairs of the Commission and the Colleges, we have done that and I assure you, there is more prospect.”
Speaking on the issue of job racketeering, he said most of the things that have done in Colleges since he took over is replacement and due processes were always followed from the Head of Service down to Federal Character Commission up to Budget office.
The Director, Colleges of Education Department, Federal Ministry of Education, Uchenna Uba, who represented the Minister of education, said the ministry is aware of the agitations of the union and is working towards addressing them.
