By Felix Khanoba
Uneasy calm now holds sway in several primary and secondary schools in the country following the decision of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) to begin the enforcement of ban on unqualified teachers.
The National Council on Education and the Federal Ministry of Education had directed TRCN to weed out non-certified individuals in the teaching profession from January 2020.
Registrar/Chief Executive of TRCN, Prof. Josiah Ajiboye, has also expressed the readiness to sanitise the profession of unqualified hands, warning that individuals that were not certified as professional teachers before 31 December 2019 deadline may have themselves to blame.
“We will start monitoring for compliance from January. The aim is not to sack anybody but to sanitise the education system and remove quackery. It will stop the teaching profession from becoming an all-comer affair.
“We also want to enhance professionalism while ensuring that every child get quality education; the era of using the teaching job as a political patronage for just everyone is over,” he said.
The move by TRCN to act on the government decision has continued to unsettle some teachers who are yet to get certify as qualified teachers.
While most of the public schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) will resume on Monday, 13 January, 2020, a teacher in LEA Primary School, Dutse, said plan is already underway to appeal to Federal Government to delay the enforcement.
“Some teachers are already appealing through the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) to the Federal Government not to go ahead with the planned sack of teachers that are yet to write the TRCN qualifying exam, but should instead give them more time.
“But we are still waiting to see if the Federal Government will go ahead with the threat, which we pray should not happen,” the teacher who craved anonymity said.
