Colleges Of Education Teachers Mull Strike Over Plan To Scrap NCE

THE standard of education in Nigeria may dip further soon as the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) is perfecting plans to embark on industrial action to protest the planned proscription of National Colleges of Education (NCE).

President of the union, Mohammed Ibrahim disclosed this in Abuja yesterday while reacting to the declaration by the Minister of State for Education, Kenneth Gbagi that government plans to discontinue with the NCE programmes.

He said: “If this trend, which is conspicuously anti-people, is not halted, we will have no option but to mobilize the hapless Nigerian masses who have a future in the college of education system to resist to the last man, this dastardly act of insensitivity to the implication of such an unbecoming executive arrogance.”

He explained that the Certificate in Education being awarded by the Colleges of Education is meant to serve as a benchmark certification for teaching at the basic education level in the country.

Ibrahim argued that despite the award of degrees by some Colleges of Education duly certified by the National Universities Commission (NUC), the colleges have not lost focus on the special role of acting as a midwife in facilitating the academic progress of a fairly good percentage of less privileged Nigerians who cannot afford direct university education for numerous and obvious reasons of poor governance and deliberately imposed poverty on the seemingly helpless masses in this country.

He said: “Considering the critical roles that the Colleges of Education have been playing in the country for several decades now, the recent idea of scrapping out colleges of education from the tertiary education tripod spells grave implications for common Nigerians and the system as a whole.”