Jigawa govt uncovers teacher receiving salary despite absconding for 14 years

The Jigawa State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) has discovered that 245 teachers continue to receive monthly salaries after quitting the job, including one of them for over 14 years.

The SUBEB’s chairperson, Haruna Musa, told reporters that deserter teachers have contributed to the educational crisis in the North-west state.

“They are collecting the money without doing the job. It’s unfortunate for a teacher to be away from school for seven to 10 years. I have gotten somebody who has not been in school for 14 years and is collecting a salary every month.

“This is unfortunate. We cannot forgive them, we want to recover the money they collected without teaching and ensure that teachers are in school and doing what they are paid for”, Mr Musa said.

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Mr Musa said out of the 245 teachers who absconded, 162 returned to school.

“Some (teachers) are working elsewhere but still collecting salary as teachers from the Jigawa State Government. Because they are qualified teachers, we are giving them the opportunity to come back and do their work; otherwise, we will go ahead and do the needful”, Mr Musa said.

He said some of the absconded teachers engaged unqualified teachers to teach on their behalf

“It’s unfortunate that someone will be engaged to teach but will never be in school. Some engage unqualified substitutes and pay them N20,000, while collecting over N100,000.

“I saw someone collecting N236,000 but engaged somebody to teach for him at N20,000,” the official said.

When asked if the affected teachers would be sacked, he said, “We are making efforts to bring them back to the classroom, it not an issue of sacking them, we are making sure that they are in school and doing the right thing.”

Competency test

Mr Musa said 10,000 teachers will undergo examinations to identify training needs of the teachers and their areas of competency.

He said the examinations were designed to assess their knowledge of the basic school curriculum, identify ill-equipped teachers and give them the requisite teaching skills.

He said the government has the resources to train all teachers in the state, and assured that no teacher would be sacked or demoted after the competency test.

“The training will enable us to know the needs of the teachers in terms of training; it is not a punitive measure. We are not sacking anybody, we are just trying to improve the teachers.

“After the needs assessment, we are coming up with three outcomes. The first is to identify teachers with strong knowledge and relevant skills to teach. We will group them as competent teachers, and they will be used as master trainers in the state.

“The second group is for those who have knowledge but lack relevant teaching skills. We will help that teacher to improve in terms of the skills they require to teach well in class.

“The last category is for those who don’t have knowledge and skills. We will enrol them in the colleges of education in the state and give them a special remediation programme so that we can improve them in terms of content and the basics they need to teach very well.

READ ALSO: 10,000 teachers to undergo competency tests in Jigawa – SUBEB

“We will migrate them from the situation they are in to semi-competent teachers. This is the strategy we are bringing on board. The competency test is not meant to sack any teacher or tied to his/her promotion or salary.

“We only need to assess the training needs of the teacher so that we will be able to train them because the resources are limited and the numbers are much. There are over 10,000; we can not train all at the same time. With the needs assessment, we will identify what a particular teacher needs”, Mr Musa explained.

Teachers gap

Mr Musa said the state is bridging the teachers’ gap with recruitment. He said there are now five teachers per school, rising from one to two qualified teachers per school.

The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) had said the state has a shortfall of 32,000 classroom teachers in its over 3,486 post-basic and basic levels schools.

The NUT said between 2015 and 2023, about 14,000 teachers retired from service, but only 1,700 teachers were given permanent appointments despite the increasing number of enrollments and the building of more classrooms.