Borno State Governor, Babagana Umara Zulum, on Thursday travelled to Malam-Fatori, the headquarters of Abadam Local Government Area, located along the shores of Lake Chad in the northern part of the state.
During the visit, Zulum paid a surprise visit to Malam-Fatori Central Primary School and carried out an aptitude test on about 100 students at the Junior Secondary School section of the primary institution.
The governor found out that 95% of the students admitted could not read, while only seven said they could.
The governor, Professor Zulum, asked each of the seven students to read from a text book and to pronounce the phrase: “social studies”. Five of the seven students pronounced it correctly while two failed.
The governor was visibly worried about the quality of teaching especially after he found out that of the 224 teachers on the payroll of schools in the LGA, only six were on ground and none of them had teaching qualifications.
Zulum’s personal finding on Thursday tallied with a report presented to him in February, 2022, which assessed quality of primary school teachers across the 27 Local Government Areas of Borno State.
The report had categorized Abadam with headquarters in Malam-Fatori as having the worst indices because out of 224 teachers assessed, only 14 were deemed fit to teach in primary schools, and none of the 14 were at the school during the governor’s visit on Thursday.
Meanwhile, according to the report, 70 out of 224 teachers across Abadam LGA were found trainable, while 140 were untrainable and unqualified to teach.
Zulum, at the end of his findings at Malam-Fatori Central Primary Schools, gave a directive for drastic measures to be taken, including deployment of qualified teachers and the retraining of 70 teachers found to be trainable across the LGA.
The governor promised government’s support to encourage the 70 teachers to return to colleges to acquire required knowledge and teaching skills.
