By Emmanuella Akwaya, Abuja

Even as schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) suffer acute shortage of teachers, the administration, instead of employing, has resorted to keeping old teachers who have crossed retirement age.Every month, the administration pays them a whooping N200 million wages.

Investigation shows that the administration has 591 of such officers who gulp the aforementioned wages. The least officers are on Grade Level 10 with a salary of N120,000 each. The highest are on Grade Level 17 with the salary of N756,400 each. There are 37 officers on Grade Level 17. They take home a total of N27,986,800 (see table below for detail).S/NoGLTotalSalary/Month (N)Total Salary/Month (N)11733756,400.0027,986,800.00216140420,000.0058,800,000.00315161398,000.0064,078,000.00414102230,000.0023,460,000.0051358199,000.0011,542,000.0061264160,000.0010,480,000.0071033120,000.003,960,000.00 200,066,800.00Table shows salaries of 468 education officers under the Harmonised Retirement Age for Teachers in FCT It is said that the salary of one of such staff can employ as many as seven fresh teachers.A school manager lamented saying while government has failed to recruit young and willing hands into the classroom, it has come up with a policy that makes old, weak, sickly and tired hands tooccupy space while energetic, ambitious and job seeking youths are abandoned.Mass recruitment of teachers was last done many years ago. Over the years, administrations indulged in what they called Replacement where they bring in relatives, friends, political associates of those in power as teachers who are mostly not qualified.As a result, many junior and senior secondary schools now rely on teachers engaged by parents. Half of those teaching in FCTA schools is in the employ of the Parent-Teacher-Association (PTA).To be able to pay the PTA Teachers, as they called, Headteachers put different levies on parents.The revised retirement policyFollowing pressure from the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), the Federal Government in 2021 extended retirement age for teachers in public schools to 65 from 60.Former President Muhammadu Buhari signed the Harmonised Retirement Age for Teachers in Nigeria Act passed by the National Assembly.Section 1 of the Act clearly states that teachers in Nigeria shall compulsorily retire on attainment of 65 years of age or 40 years of pensionable service, whichever is earlier.Section 3 of the Act provides that the Public Service Rule or any Legislation that requires a person to retire from the Public Service at 60 years of age or after 35 years of service shall not apply to teachers in Nigeria.This raise in the retirement age and service years is pursuant to Section 58(2) of the 1999 Constitution as amended.

The FCT situationFCTA domesticated the New Retirement Age and Length of Service for Education Officers across Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).However, the administration gave conditions,saying that the officers will prove to be medically fit and would return to the classroom to teach at that age.A circular entitled Re: Guidelines on the Implementation of the New Retirement Age and Length of Service for the Teaching Profession on Nov. 23, 2021 specified eligibility viz: the officer must be — within the education cadre recognized in the scheme of service; registered with the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN); medically fit as ascertained by a qualified medical doctor; must not be under any disciplinary process.The circular signed by Muhammad Bashir, Director, Human Resource Management, FCTA, for the Permanent Secretary at the time maintained that education officers to be taken must apply and be screened by a committee set up by management.“All successful applicants will be deployed to serve as teachers in schools or Quality Assurance Officers,” the circular specified.The scheme took effect on January 1, 2021. The circular directed, “Officer who should have retired, having attained the mandatory retirement age of 60 years of service by 1st January, 2021 and desires to extend his/her service is required to submit his/her application not later than 16th December 2021.”Following this, many officers were recruited but contrary to the guidelines given by FCTA. They were not posted to classrooms. They were rather posted to the Quality Assurance Department where some of them hardly show up.A staff of the department who confided in our reporter stated that majority of the officers nurse one ailment or the other and seldom go to work.“What this means is that they’re not in the classroom, nor are they in the Quality Assurance Office. All this is happening when every month the administration parts with millions of taxpayers’ money in the name of paying salaries…” the personnel noted. It’s an absurdityReacting to this, a one-time Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) described the situation as absurd saying the FCTA’s action is detrimental to education. He urged parents to petition the minister.In his words, “Experience will expire. Some of these people are afraid of the computer.”Government may not be giving money for the oversight.”It is like what we saw at NCCE. We had no money to go on accreditation exercise.“We had to put the bill on the colleges. But why would you go to superintend someone who foots your bills? Now I hear that they carry bags of provosts.“It’s like the police. If they have no vehicles to chase criminals, there is nothing they can do,” he told our reporter.

They give envelopsA beneficiary of the service years elongation policy who would not give her name lamented the dearth of teachers in public schools in FCT.According to her, “I pulled my son out when I discovered that PTA Teachers who were mostly youth corps on national service were teachers in his school. ‘What experience had they? I cringed.'”She said apart from shortage of teachers, many children crawl on the floor because classrooms in schools on the outskirts of Abuja lack desks.The officer who is serving in the quality control unit lamented that even though reports on the poor school situation have been tendered, authorities appear unperturbed.”Every week reports are sent. To my knowledge, the last time massive recruitment of teachers was done in FCT was 2011. Many teachers have left the classroom yet there are hardly replacements.”What they [authorities] do is Replacement which does not help,” she stated.She said government has stopped funding their supervisory activities.”They argue that it is normal work we do so we don’t need any support. What we do is to go for supervision in groups. If an officer has a car, he carries others. If there is no car, we hire a vehicle and jointly pay.”It is tough. Sometimes we get to where the motor vehicle cannot proceed – bad roads.“We trek if the distance is not long. If it is long, we take motorcycles.“The encouraging thing however is that school heads normally give us envelops [money]. But that does not stop us from being objective in our reports.” Wike has not recruited yetThe FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike has not recruited any teachers since assumption of office.The minister appears obsessed with rehabilitation of roads. He has been criticised for neglecting other sectors especially health and education which residents crave.The senator representing the capital territory, Mrs IretiKingibe recently took a swipe at the minister over this. The minister responded saying she will lose her seat in the next parliamentary poll.

A dire situation

There are 205 junior schools covered by the FCT Universal Basic Education (UBE) programme and 88 senior schools under the FCT Secondary Education Board.Records show that there are about 4,000 FCTA teaching staff in junior secondary schools for the UBE programme. This translates to 20 teachers per school, i.e. 20 teachers to take 18 subjects for JSS 1, JSS 2 and JSS 3.It must be noted that there are subjects to be compulsorily taught every day. With an average of six arms per class and each arm having Mathematics and English Language taught in five sessions of 40 minutes per week, and other subjects taught in two sessions of 40 minutes per week, it means each arm has 42 hours of teaching per week.It should be noted that each year (eg JSS 1) has 42 hours by six arms equalling 252 hours of teaching every week. This further translates to a total of 756 teaching sessions for JSS 1, JSS 2 and JSS 3. This invariably means 20 teachers having a total of 37.8 sessions of 40 minutes each for Years 1, 2 and 3 respectively.This is definitely too much work load for anyone to handle hence the engagement of PTA teachers who are paid less than peanuts. In 2001 a report produced by FCTA tagged “Teacher (Manpower) Requirement for Junior Secondary Schools” showed that there was a shortfall of 5,001 teachers across the 126 junior secondary schools in FCT at the time.The statistics showed that JSS SabonGari, Gwagwalada alone lacked 150 teachers. JSS Jikwoyi in the municipal council though needed 132 teachers while JSS Kubwa 1 was without 101 teachers. ADJSS was minus 96 teachers, JSS Kubwa 2 was minus 89, JSS Zuba77 teachers and JSS Peyi 71 teachers. The school with least problem was JSS Mamagi with a shortfall of six teachers.What this means is that all FCT schools could not offer or partially offered many subjects on the curriculum. The picture has not changed since then. In fact, it might be worse due to population surge. Government aware of situationA headteacher who did not want to be named here said the Education Secretariat of FCTA is aware of the problems because every month, school heads send reports to management, giving the situation in their schools.She painted the gloomy picture: “In UBEB, very few teachers are young. Many are old. In a whole term, a child pays N3,500. From this, we pay PTA teachers.“Last employment was in 2016. Only 300 teachers were employed. There are 17 subjects taught by different teachers in my school. Many subjects have no teachers. Classes are without seats. Children sit on the floor.”The headteacher observed that the new policy has added another problem in the entire education management system in FCT.“Upon reaching the original retirement age of 60, some education officers are reluctant to leave their positions and return to classroom as stipulated in the in the new policy.“This breeds conflict between the education officers and the younger ones who are desirous to take the directorate positions. It’s a serious problem,” she concluded.

Beyond shortage of teachers

A parent who declined to be named lamented that the problem in public schools in FCT is not limited to shortage of teachers. School facilities like classrooms, furniture, audio-visual aids are grossly inadequate. In some communities, children sit under trees to receive instructions. The children are highly vulnerable to the elements.

“Where classrooms are available, they are dilapidated. These problems cut across both urban and rural schools. Different FCT ministers gave contracts for projects that were not executed or uncompleted.

“Go to the Kubwa, Nyanya, Bwari, Kwali, Abaji, you’ll see same problem of old and outdated structures. For long, the FCT administration has ignored its schools. We are tired of paying levies,” he stated. 

He appreciated the administration for embarking on renovation of school structures.

He however called on the minister to equally give serious consideration for the problem of inadequate teachers in the classrooms.

“Without delay, he should tackle this thing about teachers massively leaving classrooms to become quality controllers whereas there is nothing to control. If there’re no teachers in the classroom, what can they control?” he asked.

He called on the administration to review its implementation or completely abandon the Harmonised Retirement Age for Teachers in Nigeria Act because it is counterproductive in FCT.

Efforts to reach the FCT Minister failed. The Chief Press Secretary (CPS) to FCTA, Mr Tony Ogunleye declined to speak on the matter, saying, “It’s under the Education Secretariat.”

Similarly, the Public Relations Officer of the secretariat, Mr Kabiru Musa would not talk. In his words, “It’s a policy matter.”