One administration that has always carried the people along in the scheme of things is the present government in Rivers State. Since the coming on board of the Amaechi administration in October 2007, the interest which the government has exhibited in youth development is unprecedented.

Aside the inauguration of the Rivers State Social Rehabilitation Committee targeted at resettling misguided youths who resorted to militancy and sundry crimes in protest over long years of neglect by past administrations, government set out to redefine the limits of educational development by building modern schools comparable only to the best in the world, in all the nooks and crannies of the state, in addition to the building of 23 Model Secondary Schools, one in each of the 23 local government areas. This is in addition to enhancing the motivational level of the teachers by taking over payment of their salaries from the local government councils, which hitherto owed them backlog of salaries for months and sometimes running into years.

As if physical development of schools was not enough, the government also raised the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency, RSSDA which has almost outdone the State Scholarship Board in the award of scholarships to deserving students to study abroad. In fact, RSSDA recently firmed plans with a technical institution in the United Kingdom for the training of Rivers youths in sundry vocations. All these development efforts go to buttress the fact that government rightly appreciates the role functional and technical education could play in human emancipation and the overall development of society. But mindful of the need that quality teachers are needed to translate government dream into reality government recruited Indian teachers to handle the 23 model secondary schools across the state.

Besides, government also recently announced that it would soon recruit about 10,000 teachers. Governor Amaechi who made the announcement while addressing workers on May Day said the plan was geared at boosting the manpower in the education sector. The Governor then used the occasion to call on the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) to collaborate with his administration in the process of transforming the education sector while urging the NUT to also address the issue of corrupt activities by some of its members. That teachers play an important role in transforming the society through imparting of functional education to our youth is a foregone conclusion. What I understand the government’s charge to the NUT to mean is that teachers have a crucial role to play in the realisation  of  government’s dream of social transformation by raising students who would compete with others in the oil and gas industry in the state and Niger Delta region in general, thus reducing unemployment and brigandage.

In view of this tall order, no one is left in doubt that the 10,000 teachers that may be recruited must be men and women of proven skills which they could impart to youth to make themself-starters after school. There is no debating this fact. We have seen over the years that the education the British left us with was much geared toward reading and writing, a development which relegated the much needed technical education required to drive the economy. This expectation from the teaching crew becomes more imperative when one consider that today the country produces more school leavers and graduates than the economy can absorb. Hence, the emphasis on technical education to reduce the high unemployment rate whereby so many people on whom public funds have been invested remain idle or unproductively utilised cannot be overemphasised. Moreover, it would be appreciated that in recruitment matters of this nature whereby selected teachers would be deployed to the various local government areas, the selection process, apart from being as transparent as possible, is expected to produce teaching staff who are well qualified and ready to serve in any part of the state. There is no doubt that conditions in the rural areas of the state make such places unattractive to workers, especially teachers who loath being posted to these areas lacking in accommodation and other social facilities. This situation has, over the years, produced a situation whereby there is a glut of teachers in schools in Port Harcourt and its environs while the rural schools are grossly neglected.

The recruitment of these new 10,000 teachers should therefore come after a thorough audit of the teachers’ strength in the state. I believe that the teachers we need should be more of those that are technically inclined or vast in numerical subjects which is badly needed in today’s technology driven world. This is the import of the Governors appeal to the NUT when he said he needed the latter to help government in employment reduction, as a poorly trained youth would eventually become a liability and not an asset to the society. Government on its part should evolve a strategy whereby basic accommodation should be provided for teachers in and around their places of work.  To return the education industry in Nigeria to past years when Nigeria exported intellectuals around the world requires the input of teachers, parents and the government working in synergy to make our school leavers useful members of society.