Segun Awofadeji
18 November 2008
Bauchi — Bauchi State Governor, Malam Isa Yuguda last Friday returned to the classroom as a voluntary teacher of secondary school students. An Economics graduate of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, the Governor taught 'Production' in Economics to one of the SSS 3 classes at Government Girls Science College, Bauchi.
Yuguda had early this year launched a 'Voluntary Teaching Service' (VTS) where all interested civil and public servants, as well as other interested people in the state were expected to teach in the secondary schools, to complement the efforts of the state government to revamp the education sector.
The Governor gave the students notes and assignments on the topic, with a promise to be back next time to continue from where he stopped. Fielding questions from news men after the class, Yuguda said that, "I am starting the voluntary teaching in fulfillment of the promise I made earlier on, this is to complement what the few teachers we have in the state are doing. When we came last year, there were 150, 000 secondary school students with only a little over 2, 000 teachers, this is not acceptable to us."
He added that his administration has been able to recruit more teachers, bringing the figure to about 5000 teachers at the secondary schools level and that plans were underway to reduce class populations to manageable sizes.
Asked how he would cope as a volunteer since he did not train as a teacher, Yuguda said, "yes, I am not a trained teacher but over the years I have developed enough experience to be one as often my children always come to me to ask questions on various subjects they are taught in school, you can see that with that experience I will be able to cope. I have decided to go to each of the schools to teach for one hour every week."
He then enjoined all interested persons to join the VTS in order to produce students who would be good leaders of tomorrow, saying that whatever was done today would shape the future of the state.
Some of the teachers who witnessed class session described it as a very good turn around for the good of the state education sector saying, if others in high offices would emulate the good example, education in the state would get back on track in no distance time and the state will be the better for it.
The students also expressed their delight over the new development and assured the Governor that they would make good use of the golden opportunity of being taught by the Governor himself.
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