Kaduna — About N11.5 billion has been expended by the National Tea-chers' Institute (NTI), Kaduna, on the capacity building workshops for primary and junior secondary schools teachers in the country, Director General of the institute, Dr. Aminu Ladan Sharehu, has said.

Addressing newsmen, the Dr. Sharehu said the money was expended between 2009 and this year. He said amount was used in training 425,000 teachers in the country.

"In 2009, we trained 120,000 teachers with N3.5 billion, in 2010, we used N4 billion to train 140,000, in 2011, we spent N2billion on the training of 125,000 and this year, we are spending about N1.9 billion to train 40,000 teachers nationwide. The monies were used for training manuals, educational kits, refreshment for teachers and their allowances," he said.

He said for the country to address the problems bedevilling the education sector, teachers must be regularly trained.

"Inadequate training is the major problem affecting the perfor-mance of teachers in the country. For our teachers to perform, they must be trained at least three times annually. They also need to be encouraged to acquire more academic qualification. There is nothing bad for Ph.D holders to teach in primary schools," he said.