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Unqualified teachers flood classrooms, especially in private schools, says TRCN
The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) has identified the shortage of properly trained educators across the country as a major contributor to the falling quality of education nationwide.
During an appearance on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Monday, TRCN’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Ronke Soyombo, voiced concerns on the occasion of the 2025 World Teachers’ Day.
Addressing the theme for this year, ‘Recasting Teaching As A Collaborative Profession’, Dr. Soyombo pointed out that numerous educators lack the necessary credentials, while others who are passionate about teaching face barriers to entry due to insufficient training.
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She added that the organization is implementing initiatives to address the deficit of qualified personnel in the field.
“There are many unqualified teachers in the profession. We have those teaching in classrooms but don’t have the teaching qualifications, particularly in private schools.
“Again, it is one thing for you to say you have been to teacher’s college, and it is another thing to be able to break it down to the level of the students to soothe their specific needs. This challenge has to be addressed, and as soon as we have the accelerated programme, that is going to bring a lot of teachers in, because they don’t want to come to public schools. And what is stopping them is that they don’t have education degrees.
“We currently have about 1.4 million teachers registered with the TRCN, and our target in the next two years is to get to 20 million. What we have done is to digitise our systems, so that more people can be able to register.
“Every teacher has a gift which is different from one person to another. But what we are propagating in education is for everybody to come together and plan lessons together.
“You might be three teachers teaching a particular year group, but if you come together and plan lessons together, you are bound to come up with something richer than when you work in isolation.
“When you also look at the 21st-century education itself, it is very important that we pass the culture of collaboration down to our children.
“We need to allow our children to collaborate with mixed ability groupings. Teachers are really eager this year to see how they can build more on collaboration in their schools.
“On leadership as well, teachers can go to other schools to see which ones are performing well, and take the good practices to their various schools.”
On Sunday, Nigeria’s First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, honored educators around the world and called for urgent efforts to resolve the critical lack of teachers on a global scale.
Tinubu referred to teachers as “true heroes, shaping minds, nurturing dreams, and guiding generations.”
In her remarks, Soyombo also expressed worry over the teacher scarcity in Nigeria and outlined governmental measures to combat the issue.
“There is no doubt that we have shortages of teachers, so what we are doing with this particular government is to accelerate professional diploma in education. For people who don’t have it, now is the time they will be able to have access. We are accelerating the course to six months for experienced teachers, so that as soon as they are through, they can have experience. This will make us have enough hands in the teaching line.
“We are going to have enough teachers coming into the teaching line, because people are now eager to come into the profession.
“What the TRCN is also doing is looking at how we can upgrade teachers. We are also supporting them with resources in classes, because some teachers are very good, and are looking for how to plan lessons to support other teachers, and that will also encourage other teachers to come in,” she said.
Justice Muhammad Nuraddeen Bello of High Court sitting in Sokoto State has sentenced three men, including a foreign national, to death by hanging, after convicting them on charges bordering on terrorism and arms proliferation.
The convicts, Yusuf Muhammad (alias Sallau), a Nigerien; Jabbi Alhaji Yalle; and Kabiru Muhammad, were apprehended on 13th June, 2025, by the Department of State Services (DSS) Counter Terrorism Unit in connection with cross-border criminal activities bordering on arms trafficking and terrorism.
Bello, who found all three defendants guilty as charged and sentenced them to death by hanging, while also ordering the forfeiture of all monetary exhibits recovered from the convicts to the Federal Government, said: “The conviction is the latest in a series of successful prosecutions by the DSS in its sustained operations against terrorism and organised cross-border criminal networks across Nigeria.”
The sentencing is coming about two weeks after the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja sentenced each of the five suspects arrested on May 31, 2026, by the DSS for their involvement in the November 21, 2025, attack on St Mary’s Catholic School, Papiri, Niger State, to 25 years’ imprisonment.
Justice Binta Nyako, had handed down the judgment after the men, including two Nigeriens, pleaded guilty to all four terrorism-related charges, bordering on support for the commission of an act of terrorism, breaching both Section 16 of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022, and the Firearms Act, were pressed against them.
According to Count One, the men were accused of jointly conspiring to assist a terrorist by agreeing and intentionally playing various roles towards conveying 15 AK 103 rifles as well as about 1,434 rounds of 7.62mm live ammunition from the Diffa region, Republic of Niger, to one Malam Ahmad, a member of the Boko Haram terrorist group based in Borgu, Niger State, and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 26(1) of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022.
Primate Elijah Ayodele, is on the verge of coughing out a whopping N10billion, if he fails to offer unrestrained apology to Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, former Governor of Kano State within the next 24 hours, and retract his claim that the former Minister of Defence is bidding his time to betray Peter Obi, to whom he is to contest the 2027 presidential election as a running mate.
Without doing so, the controversial cleric, should be ready for a major court battle with the vice-presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), the platform on which the pair is to contest the election.
In a letter indicating a legal action against Ayodele of the INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church over defamatory remarks, Kwankwaso, through Magaji Mato Ibrahim, SAN & Co., his lawyers demanded an immediate retraction and apology from the cleric over the allegations.
Details of the letter, dated June 11, and unveiled through the X platform of the legal team, was based on a viral video recorded during a live-streamed church service, where the preacher made allegations targeting Kwankwaso’s integrity as Peter Obi’s running mate under the NDC.
Quoting the cleric as stating: “KWANKWASO IS A FAKE TO OBI, KWANKWASO WILL BETRAY YOU. KWANKWASO HAS BEEN PAID TO BE VICE PRESIDENT TO OBI AMONG OTHER LIBELOUS COMMENTS WHILE PRETENDING TO BE A PREACHER,” the former governor said the comments were unprovoked, grossly unfounded, and carefully designed to create a rift within the ranks of the political party and its supporters.
Handing Ayodele a 24-hour ultimatum to publish a full and unequivocal retraction across all social media platforms and news outlets with the same prominence as the original video, they also demanded a written undertaking that he would cease and desist from making any further malicious statements against their client, warning that failure to comply, would lead to full legal actions.
The letter stated: “We shall claim substantial damages to the tune of Ten Billion Naira and cost of the action on a full indemnity basis amongst other reliefs.”
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday demanded the immediate end to the exportation of minerals from countries in Africa in their raw forms, which he said had led to massive exploitation of the continent.
The President, told member countries of the African Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG), a forum of Ministers in charge of Mining and Solid Minerals on the continent to speak with one voice to promote, collective interests, ensure value addition, and prevent the continent from becoming merely a source of raw materials for the rest of the world.
As the Grand Patron of the group, chaired by Dele Alake, Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals Development, gave the charge while receiving a delegation of AMSG in the State House, Tinubu told the delegation that the group had a critical role to play in strengthening Africa’s bargaining power in the global mineral market and ensuring that the continent derives maximum value from its natural resources.
His words: “ What we should do is avoid bureaucracy and deceit; we must put an end to exploitation. The rest of the world won’t mind if your country is a cesspit of dams and rubbish and excavates your raw materials without giving value.
“It is our responsibility to collaborate and cooperate to ensure that these metals and minerals bring value to us, bring technology to us, and we can do it. It is how much each country will put into the research, development and refinery. I don’t see reasons we cannot demand centralisation of that conversation somewhere on the continent. So why not utilise that in our research and development and knowledge-based economy to enhance the quality of life and bring prosperity to our people.”
Emphasising that Africa possessed enormous mineral wealth that should be strategically harnessed to drive industrialisation, create jobs and accelerate economic transformation across the continent, the President, said the era of exporting raw minerals without local processing and beneficiation must give way to a new model that encourages investment in local industries, technology transfer and the development of value chains that retain wealth within Africa.
Alake, who had earlier expressed gratitude to the President for his exemplary leadership under the Renewed Hope Agenda, said the gesture had shown support for Nigeria’s mineral sector, especially in the local value-addition and economic diversification drive, where artisanal miners are empowered.
He told the President: “You encouraged us to look at the focal point of the establishment of this group, which is to ensure that the African natural resources, especially with regards to minerals, critical matters, are localised, the beneficiation coming directly to Africans generally.
“You charged us that we should set our sails very high and ensure that local value addition is a pivot around which all the objectives of this organisation should revolve.
“So, sir, we have gone implemented your charge and we are quitted that today local value addition is reverberating all over Africa.”
He added that some member countries have gone ahead to ban the export of raw minerals.
He explained members of the body were in Abuja for the Fifth edition of the African Natural Resources and Energy Investment Summit (AFNIS 2026), to push for a new continental approach to resource management and industrial development.
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