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my life's exams
PART 1
My name is Linda. I am a Nigerian. Nigeria the heartbeat of Africa. And in Nigeria, Adamawa state, in the North-Eastern part of the country. The state shares border with the Cameroonian Republic. Sometimes it's as if we are more of outsiders than Nigerians. We are distant from most happenings in the nation. I am a teacher. In fact, I've been a teacher for more than a decade now but nothing in my hands to show for. We eat, pay bills and before you know it the whole salary is gone. Nothing more. Year in year out. Nothing has ever been easy for me in this profession. I come to think a Nigerian teacher is just out to labor and to manage life. Most people say the reward of teachers is in heaven. So we are to be patient and manage. The problems are just piling up and the teacher is the one facing most of them. From lack of upgrade to poor salaries to bad behaving students to lack of dedicated administrators to lack of adequate facilities to lack timely promotion exercise, hmmm.
Talking of lack of timely promotion. A teacher can work for years without anything like promotion. Even with the promotion exercises. One can never be sure of witnessing his/her salary grow as his/her rank grows. So much names and offices and more lack. There has to be a lot of follow ups, and godfatherly backups, and big renown last names, and so on, before one can enjoy the benefit of his/her labour. Or one can just put up an application and keep following up until someone decided to have mercy on you and work on your file. My goodness, thats the one the touches everyone's nerves.
PART 2
Last year we had a change of government. The government came with lots of visions and promises for the education sector. The governor wanted the system to be like what it use to be in the last two to three decades. With the new governor on seat, he tried to change everything. Conducted promotion exercises to only those who are due for promotion. Those that attended where either due for double promotion, or promoted without pay, or another case and those that are due for promotion. Wow, we finished the exercise successfully or maybe not. From August last year to now April of another year. Nothing has been heard about the promotion exercise. Nobody saw any change in their salaries, nothing at all. It's as if we planted a chaff that is never going to grow. Hmmm. Sometimes later, I went to the school board. There I met the place as empty as a ghost house. Empty offices. Later I saw few vehicles. Wandering to find out what is going on I met some teachers hanging around waiting to see the board staff. They came with their personal vehicles. So that explains the vehicles I saw. We exchange greetings and I asked, "so what's going on?" They said they are waiting for the staff. They came in respect to their promotion. So I continued wondering why they are not in office by 8:30am. And now is about 9oclock but no sign. At 9:15am some of the staff started trotting in to the building. These are people who talk about punctuality anytime they come for supervisions in the schools. Wow! what a great...
My name is Linda. I am a Nigerian. Nigeria the heartbeat of Africa. And in Nigeria, Adamawa state, in the North-Eastern part of the country. The state shares border with the Cameroonian Republic. Sometimes it's as if we are more of outsiders than Nigerians. We are distant from most happenings in the nation. I am a teacher. In fact, I've been a teacher for more than a decade now but nothing in my hands to show for. We eat, pay bills and before you know it the whole salary is gone. Nothing more. Year in year out. Nothing has ever been easy for me in this profession. I come to think a Nigerian teacher is just out to labor and to manage life. Most people say the reward of teachers is in heaven. So we are to be patient and manage. The problems are just piling up and the teacher is the one facing most of them. From lack of upgrade to poor salaries to bad behaving students to lack of dedicated administrators to lack of adequate facilities to lack timely promotion exercise, hmmm.
Talking of lack of timely promotion. A teacher can work for years without anything like promotion. Even with the promotion exercises. One can never be sure of witnessing his/her salary grow as his/her rank grows. So much names and offices and more lack. There has to be a lot of follow ups, and godfatherly backups, and big renown last names, and so on, before one can enjoy the benefit of his/her labour. Or one can just put up an application and keep following up until someone decided to have mercy on you and work on your file. My goodness, thats the one the touches everyone's nerves.
PART 2
Last year we had a change of government. The government came with lots of visions and promises for the education sector. The governor wanted the system to be like what it use to be in the last two to three decades. With the new governor on seat, he tried to change everything. Conducted promotion exercises to only those who are due for promotion. Those that attended where either due for double promotion, or promoted without pay, or another case and those that are due for promotion. Wow, we finished the exercise successfully or maybe not. From August last year to now April of another year. Nothing has been heard about the promotion exercise. Nobody saw any change in their salaries, nothing at all. It's as if we planted a chaff that is never going to grow. Hmmm. Sometimes later, I went to the school board. There I met the place as empty as a ghost house. Empty offices. Later I saw few vehicles. Wandering to find out what is going on I met some teachers hanging around waiting to see the board staff. They came with their personal vehicles. So that explains the vehicles I saw. We exchange greetings and I asked, "so what's going on?" They said they are waiting for the staff. They came in respect to their promotion. So I continued wondering why they are not in office by 8:30am. And now is about 9oclock but no sign. At 9:15am some of the staff started trotting in to the building. These are people who talk about punctuality anytime they come for supervisions in the schools. Wow! what a great...
