According to the United Nations, the world urgently needs 44 million teachers by 2030 in order to make the Sustainable Development Goal 4 a reality. It further states that “The effect of a worldwide teacher shortage is profound, creating larger class sizes, overburdened educators, educational disparities and financial strain on school systems, impacting educational quality and access.”
Back home and in a recent troubling report by the Universal Basic Education Commission in its 2022-2023 UBEC National Personnel Audit Report, there is a shortage of 194,876 teachers in public primary schools across the country illustrating the fact that states and local governments have continued to pay lip service to education at the primary and most important level of education. The gory story continues as Nigeria is reported to have the second largest out-of-school children in the world (20 million), after India.
Worse still is the teacher-to-student ratio which is as high as 1:124 in a part of the country against the UNESCO’s prescribed 1:25. Even though the ratio fares better in the southeast with a ratio of between 1:33 and 1:38, there is still room for improvement. To close this gap, there is an urgent need for government and public spirited individuals, groups and institutions to work together to tackle the menace caused by acute shortage of teachers in the society to enable the possible attainment of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 which has the foremost mandate of ensuring that all children complete free, equitable and quality education and have access to quality early childhood development.
It is in the light of this that the senator representing Abia Central at the National Assembly, Senator Austin Akobundu, decided to award a fully funded three-year scholarship programme at the National Teachers’ Institute, to 113 beneficiaries from the six Local Government Areas that make up Abia Central Senatorial District, his constituency.
While Nigerians are used to hearing of scholarships to undergraduates, Senator Akobundu has taken a slightly different but fundamental approach in encouraging the youths to take up the teaching profession at a time it has become unattaractive to many, and ensure that those who teach our children are not only well equipped for the job but that the financial burden of being trained as qualified teachers does not become an impediment to their dream.
With this noble initiative by the senator, Abia Central Senatorial District and Abia State in particular, and Nigeria in general, are one step closer to bridging the widening and worrying gap in the teacher-to-student ratio.
Senator Akobundu who had earlier in the year awarded scholarships to undergraduates of Abia Central origin was motivated this time by the fact that the teaching profession as one that has always helped to shape the future and kept society going despite the myriad socioeconomic crises afflicting the world, deserves to be kept alive through public-spirited support as it has become obvious that government alone can not resolve the issues affecting the profession especially as the number and quality of teachers available to school children have direct impact on the overall quality of the nation’s education.
The onus is now on the beneficiaries to make the best use of the opportunity, face their training squarely and concentrate on being the best they can be since the financial burden that could have constituted a hinderance to them has been eliminated via the scholarship.
In the light of the above, Senator Austin Akobundu has set the pace for leaders to give back meaningfully to society through such scholarships and other initiatives that have intergenerational impact on would-be teachers and the school children they would be teaching and mentoring in the future in particular and the society in general. Such a strategic intervention by the senator is worthy of both commendation and emulation. As a first-time senator, this is an indication that Senator Akobundu is a deep-thinking man who obviously has more in store for his people. They certainly did not make a mistake in electing him as their representative at the Senate.
It is therefore the hope of his constituents and Abians that two years down the line, after their graduation, the state would be welcoming freshly trained teachers ready to be deployed to schools to further shore up the gap in the teacher-to-student ratio in Abia, thanks to this exceptional initiative by Senator Austin Akobundu.