The National Teachers Institute (NTI) has trained 23,924 teachers in Oyo State between 2006 and 2010 under the Federal Government’s MDG projects.

Mr. Moses Akinrelere, the Oyo State Coordinator of NTI, made the announcement last Thursday in Ibadan in an interview with  newsmen.

He said the programme, tagged, “Nationwide Capacity Building For Primary School Teachers”, was aimed at improving the quality of teachers and enhancing uniform approach to teaching in the nation’s primary schools.

Akinrelere said the NTI was committed to producing quality teachers for all the states, adding that teachers who were trained by the institute ranked among the best in the country.

“If you go through our insturctional materials in all subject areas, you will see that the materials were produced by the foremost educationists and renown professors in Nigerian universities,”, he added.

The coordinator said most of the faculties of education in the nation’s universities relied on the institute’s modules for the training of their students.

He said the structure of NTI programmes provided the best opportunity for many brilliant individuals who, because of lack of sponsorship, could not attend regular schools.

Akinrelere said a recent reform programme carried out in line with government’s directive had further enhanced the quality of the institute’s programmes in all the states, with the admission requirements already upgraded.

He said that all the students recently admitted by the institute in Oyo State were qualified to study in any university in the country.

Akinrelere urged intending students who could not make it through the Uniform Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) to take advantage of the opportunity provided by NTI to study at the centre nearest to them.

He also urged state and federal governments to recruit NTI teachers in their schools for better service delivery.