The Niger State Universal Basic Education Board will soon release appointment letters to 2,600 applicants for teaching jobs in the state.
The Chairman of NSUBEB, Dr. Isa Adamu, confirmed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Minna on Thursday.
According to him, the successful applicants are to teach in Primary and Junior Secondary Schools in all the 25 local government areas of the state.
Adamu said the board arrived at that number after series of tests it administered on the prospective employees to weed out the unsuitable ones.
He said: “When there was outcry on the recruitment in 2019, Governor Abubakar Bello of Niger set up a committee to look into it.
“I was a member of that committee.
“Our committee went round and what we simply did was to look at all the candidates that attended the last interview and we re-invited and re-interviewed them.
“The committee administered a simple reading and writing tests, which some of them that were initially selected failed.
“We had no choice but to replace them after a diligent reading and writing tests, administered to all the candidates.
“Those who were able to defend their results, we have prepared their appointment letters.
“We replaced a lot of candidates that could not read and write after the second interview.”
Adamu noted that many of the candidates were parading certificates they could not defend.
The NSUBEB chief described such development as unfortunate for the teaching profession, not only in Niger State, but in Nigeria as a whole.
He said the state government was magnanimous enough in the selection process, irrespective of state of origin, especially candidates who studied English, Mathematics and Science-related courses.
Adamu said the board would not rest on its oars as it would continue to train and retrain its teachers.
He said: “The most important thing is for us to reorganise and keep on training and retraining our teachers and we are doing that already.
“From January 11, 2020, we shall be flagging off ‘Teachers’ Training Programme’ for over 5,000 teachers in the state.”
The chairman described training as their first priority because of the premium the state government placed on education.
Adamu noted that if the system had good teachers’ structure, infrastructure would only complement.
He said: “We are already involved in continuous teachers’ training.
“Any teacher we find unsuitable for training, we shall deploy to another job within the school system.
“We shall do it and with concerted efforts of all the stakeholders, we will achieve our educational goal.”
NAN.
