Joe Effiong, Uyo

Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has decried the dearth of teachers in Akwa Ibom State.

The teachers’ union alleged that one teacher teaches 100 pupils in the state public schools.

NUT Chairman, Etim Ukpong, who disclosed this while speaking with Daily Sun, said there were only 11,913 teachers made up of 8,923 females and 2,2920 males in the 1,161 public primary schools in the state.

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While describing the number of teachers as grossly inadequate, Ukpong said there is an urgent need to employ more teachers since Akwa Ibom State, with 18,790 teachers in public primary and secondary schools, has one of the lowest number of teachers in public schools compared to other state similar number of schools in the country.

He regretted that teachers’ recruitment in the state is usually politicised when political office holders would defy governor directive and bring out lists of their cronies to be employed, thus ignoring input of the union.

On the purported free and compulsory education in the state, the NUT boss said education was only tuition-free whereas there were other expenses which government does not undertake, thus still leaving the burden on the parents.

He lamented that the state government was owing public schools five-term subvention which the school heads would have used to run the schools, thereby making the assumed free and compulsory education not qualitative.