Teachers may attract over N1trn annually to Nigeria – Ogudoro

One of Nigeria’s foremost contemporary educationists, Dr Peter Ogudoro, says Nigerian teachers are currently being trained to contribute meaningfully to the economic development of the country.

Ogudoro said Nigerian teachers were capable of attracting at least one trillion Naira, annually, in revenue to the economy from their educational services.

The Facebook Community Accelerator Award Winner for year 2021 made the declaration in Kenya, while addressing Kenyan teachers, who hosted him recently as a guest speaker at an event held at Hilton Hotel, Nairobi, under the auspices of Teachers Notice Board Kenya, a teachers’ community of over four hundred thousand members.

Dr Ogudoro in a press release issued Thursday, in Lagos, proposed that functional education delivered by highly motivated teachers should be considered Africa’s route out of the pervasive poverty on the continent.

He revealed that Facebook is currently supporting the Nigerian Teachers’ community of over three hundred thousand members which he leads to promote learner-centred teaching in Nigerian schools, which, according to him, holds the key to global competitiveness for Nigeria.

READ: Nigerian teacher Peter Ogudoro wins Facebook award for creating ‘most helpful’ platform

He told school owners who benefited from one of the Facebook’s school growth projects recently that several other opportunities were being sponsored by Facebook to help the country use high quality education to accelerate the nation’s development.

One of such projects, he said, is an international teachers’ conference which is expected to hold in Lagos from April 11-12, 2022.

According to him, the heads of regional and federal education agencies in the country such as the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), National Universities Commission (NUC), and Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) will attend the event to help school owners and teachers understand new education policy directions, so they can perform their roles effectively.

On teachers’ conditions of service, he encouraged public and private school owners in the country to pay teachers well and invest enormously in teacher education and training to ensure that Nigerian teachers become globally competitive.

READ: Nigerian teacher up for $1m global prize award

He, however, revealed that members of Nigerian Teachers online community (www.facebook.com/groups/nigerianteachers) are currently being assisted by Facebook to acquire cutting-edge skills in teaching and school promotion to enable them to earn the income they deserve and attract huge foreign exchange from abroad which will improve their welfare and promote the economic wellbeing and reputation of Nigeria.

Ogudoro dusclosed that Facebook has commissioned him to produce a handbook for teachers which will become a reference material that will prescribe international best practice in teaching and learning and help the 85 million teachers in the world serve the over 1.5 billion children and young people in the world’s school system well.

The Nigerian Teachers Facebook community was founded in 2016 by Dr Ogudoro as a platform for teachers to share free resources for better quality teaching and for networking in pursuit of enhanced career prospects. The community now has over three hundred thousand members and has become the largest gathering of teachers in Nigeria.

Ogudoro is an alumnus of the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, where he earned a PhD in Education and received special training in Education Leadership, Career Management and Development Communication. He is a product of several other research-intensive institutions in the world including Austria’s Centre for Innovation in Education.