Benue needs 5,000 Secondary School teachers

The Executive Secretary, Benue State Teaching Service Board, Prof. Wilfred Uji has said that the state needs 5,000  secondary school teachers to adequately cater for the pupils.

Speaking with newsmen yesterday in his office in Makurdi,  Uji noted that no fewer than 500 teachers have retired and other 100 teachers died which were to be replaced and couple with the shortage of teachers.

He further said that over 200,000 students and more than 1,000 secondary school teachers in public secondary schools in the state were forced out of school due to Fulani herdsmen invasion of the state in 2018.

During the herdsmen attack on the state. Uji further said that over 20 out of the 64 government-owned secondary schools were attacked across the state.

He said that it would need over N1 billion to reconstruct and rehabilitate the schools destroyed while at the same time appealing to the federal government to assist.

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According to him,  ’20 out of the 64 government-owned secondary schools were completely razed down as a result of the invasion, disclosing that one teacher lost his life during the attacks.

“At one instance,  the herdsmen wrote a letter to the principal of Community Secondary School, Tongov in Katsina-Ala local government area and the man died later.

“I can categorically tell you that the future of children displaced by the attack is bleak, and it will take the State and other parts of Northern Nigeria more than 100 years to catch up with the rest of the States in the country educationally.

“The North accounts for over 80 percent illiteracy rate in the country due to insurgency and other unrest around the region. There are over 5 million school dropouts in Northern Nigeria.

“There is no future for our children educationally. Urgent intervention is needed to restore confidence in the system.  We should stop playing politics. In the next 100 years, we will still find ourselves quarreling over the issue of education. The North is the one marginalizing itself. The Northerners especially the President should wake up and stabilize the educational system in that region”

“I urge the Federal government to set up Secondary Schools Commission like Nigeria University Commission, NUC, Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC and National Board of Technical Education to regulate Secondary school in the country”, Uji said.