10,000 Nigerian graduates jostle for primary school teachers’ job in Ekiti

Not less than 10,000 graduates have applied for primary school teaching job in Ekiti State

Francisca Aladejana, Ekiti SUBEB Chairman, said the huge turnout of applicants compelled the commission to postpone the exercise.

Aladejana confirmed master’s degree holders were among those who obtained application forms, Punch reported.

SUBEB had in its advertisement called for interested Bachelor’s degree and  National Certificate in Education  Bachelor’s degree holders to come to its office on Tuesday and Wednesday to apply for primary school teaching jobs.

Aladejana said, “We underestimated the job that young graduates are not likely to come to teach in primary schools. But I tell you today that there are people with master’s degrees who turned up.

“We have over 10,000 that bombarded us today, we had to postpone it because we did not know that they would  turn out in such a large number.”

The SUBEB chief said she was confident that graduates would be happy with the job.

She said,  “Most of our teachers are graduates. Almost 80 percent of the teachers on  the ground that were employed with NCE have  done part-time degree programmes and are now graduates.”

Aladejana, who did not disclose the number of existing vacancies,  assured primary school teachers in the state that the state government had no plans to sack them.

She added: “We are filling vacancies. The education secretaries in all the local government areas have compiled the vacancies they have. So, all our teachers are intact. There is no problem with them, we are just filling the  vacancies that exist.”

The state Chairman of Nigeria Union of Teachers, Olusegun Olugbesan, said they had been monitoring the recruitment of primary school teachers in the state to ensure that the recruitment exercise was done properly.

Olugbesan stated, “It is a welcome development. For a very long time, we have been agitating that there should be a recruitment of primary school teacher. Now that we are aware that SUBEB has taken this step, it is a positive step in a positive direction.

“There is an acute shortage of teachers. We are persuaded that this singular step taken by SUBEB and the state government will alleviate the suffering of our pupils.”