The crisis in Nigeria’s classrooms is no mystery. Poor remuneration and neglect of teachers have dragged our educational standards into the mud. When teachers are underpaid, undervalued, and demotivated, what emerges is exactly what we see today: falling standards, brain drain, and a generation shortchanged of knowledge. Many of our best educators have abandoned classrooms for better-paying jobs. Others have left the country altogether, their talents snapped up abroad where teachers are respected and rewarded. At home, some states still scandalously pay as little as N18,000—far below the N70,000 national minimum wage.
This is not just shameful, it is destructive. Teaching, once a noble profession, has lost its dignity. Those who stand at the blackboard today are rarely given the reverence once accorded to them. Instead, the profession is increasingly filled with half-trained, unmotivated workers simply trying to get by. The result? Poor outcomes, frustrated parents, and students left unprepared for the future. The irony is bitter: presidents, governors, and ministers—all of them once shaped by teachers—have collectively failed to shape policies that protect and uplift those same teachers. Nigeria budgets barely 7% for education, less than half of UNESCO’s recommended 15–20%.
The 2025 budget shortfall alone is nearly N290 billion. Add chronic salary delays, strikes, and poor infrastructure, and it is clear why the system is broken. Education is the foundation of every other sector. A nation that neglects its teachers builds its future on sand. The government must declare an emergency in education—allocate more funding, guarantee timely payment, improve working conditions, and restore dignity to teaching. Teachers deserve more than empty promises and occasional rhetoric.
As Nigeria marks 65 years of independence, we cannot continue to celebrate freedom while enslaving the very people who hold the keys to our children’s future. The labourer deserves his wages—not in the hereafter, but now. Let the teacher’s reward begin on earth. If Nigeria is to rise again, the chalk and the blackboard must no longer be symbols of poverty, but of pride.
