• Teacher of the year gets N10m
By Zika Bobby
Teachers are the most underpaid, underappreciated and underrecognised professionals in Nigeria, yet, their place in the value chain presupposes they should be prioritised as the most important.
Increasingly, the name ‘teacher’ has moved from denoting discipline and inspiring the middle class to connote poverty, low aspiration and an infinitely unimaginative and uncolourful segment of humanity.
While aspirational men might want their wives to be teachers, perhaps for the sake of the discipline demanded by the upbringing of their children, it is difficult to find parents who would wish their daughters to get married to teachers. It is almost a sentence to poverty.
This is why the recent N10 million cash prize given to Esomofu Chidiebere Ifechukwu, the 2024 winner of the Maltina Teacher of the Year award, becomes important to all progressive-minded people in Nigeria and provides a basis for the reappraisal of the role of teachers in our country and the importance of insitutionalising appropriate rewards for the important jobs that they perform.
It also draws attention to past efforts geared towards getting the private sector involved in the management of public owned schools in Nigeria. One of the early ways which made huge buzz around the country then was the adopt-a-school through which well-to-do individuals and corporate organisations were encouraged to adopt schools and help provide infrastructural, instructional and other forms of support that would help in augmenting the several gaps left by the inability of government to fill the needed gaps.
Nigerian Breweries (NB) appears to be investing in this area. Through the Maltina Teachers Awards, the school that produced the winning teacher is provided with N20 million worth of material to support the effective delivery and transfer of knowledge to pupils. This is in addition to the N10 million cash given to the winning teacher.
This support for the school helps in spreading motivation among both pupils and other teachers. It helps in the provision of tools and teaching aids that would be utilised by all and sundry. This was recognised by the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who, during his speech at the 2024 awards, reminded NB of the donation of a digital language laboratory to the school where the 2023 winner, Adeola Aderemi, was working.
“This donation is one of the lasting legacies of the Nigerian Breweries and Felix Ohiwerei Education Trust Fund. I applaud them for this impacting initiative. Since 2015, the initiative has continued to serve as a national platform to recognise, honour, and reward the outstanding efforts of teachers across the country,” Sanwo-Olu noted.
What NB has achieved with this is to create and spread a culture of healthy competition for value creation among teachers, a trend that has been missing in the profession.
This may have been why the managing director of NB, Hans Essaadi, said at the awards ceremony held in Lagos, that the objectives of setting up the competition have been achieved.
Essaadi stressed the need to reward and celebrate Nigerian teachers, for their daily sacrifices, toils, and efforts at shaping the minds of future leaders. This, he added, has been the driving force of the collaboration between the company and the Felix Ohiwerei Education Trust Fund to champion the cause of teachers.
He expressed the delight that the Fund, set up with the sum of N100 million, in 1994, has continued to make positive impacts in the lives of teachers, and the practice of teaching.
To further demonstrate the determination of the company not to spare any effort in ensuring that the competition continues to achieve its set goals, the NB Plc boss explained that organisers increased the cash prizes for the winning categories in this year’s edition, with the star winner going home with the sum of N10 million, instead of the N5 million cash prize in previous editions.
The process of selecting the winners starts at the state level and proceeds to the national level where the overall winners are selected. All state champions are not left empty-handed as each champion is given recognition plaques in addition to cash prizes of N1 million.
The managing director of NB Plc sees it as a way of reemphasizing the premium the business places on education, empowering Nigerian teachers, and creating a sustainable future.
“We are in Nigeria for the long haul and as an employer of thousands of Nigerians directly and indirectly, we feel the sense of commitment to support those who prepare our children for future leadership,” Esssaadi said.
Martina Ugwu, a teacher based in Enugu State recognised the importance of the Maltina initiative in providing added motivation to teachers around Nigeria, saying the award, more than anything else, is indicative of the premium the company places on the teaching profession.
Mrs. Ugwu, who teaches in a primary school said every teacher has been inspired by the recognition the Maltina Teacher of the Year Award brings to give his or her best at all times.
“Recognition can come any time. I know that the primary aim of being in the teaching profession is not to win awards and aspire for such recognitions, but I also believe it has a way of motivating us to go the extra mile to always do better. The award has become an important item on the teaching calendar as many of us, especially those who have something extra to present, look forward to it,” she said.
The culture of excellence the award has infused into the teaching profession has led to consistent professional behaviours with an impact on the quality of learning. The winner of the 2024 award, Esomnofu Ifechukwu, confessed that he has been applying for the awards since 2020. If one examines this period during which he has kept applying, it would be understood what values he has consistently given to pupils, many of whom would have moved to higher educational pursuits. It will also be understood how much of the culture would have become a part of him, even after he has succeeded in winning.
As evidence of its impact on teachers across the country, Sade Morgan, head of corporate affairs at NB, said the Maltina Teacher of the Year award has been attracting an increasing number of entries from teachers each year. For the 2024 edition, a total of 1,477 teachers submitted entries for this year’s competition out of which 1,300 were eventually shortlisted. “Of this number, 11 teachers reached the final stage of the competition, representing far higher figures, compared with those recorded last year, she said.
She added: “We have been able to democratise the participation in this project in such a way as to ensure that each and every state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, produce champions of their own. This way, there is an inspiration close enough to continue to inspire positive contributions for all teachers.”
With N10 million as the winning prize, the life of a teacher can significantly improve, which is why stakeholders are inviting more corporate organsations to also replicate what NB has been doing to ensure that the reward reaches an increasing number of teachers across the country.