Jigawa’s J-TEACH: Every classroom, a qualified teacher
By Lawal Jet Kaugama
Anyone who has grown up in a rural community knows the quiet arithmetic of a school with too few teachers. One teacher handles three classes. A subject is dropped because nobody can teach it. A child who might have become an engineer or a nurse drifts home early, having learned just enough to get by. Nobody announces this loss. It simply accumulates, one unfilled classroom at a time.
That is why the events at the Banquet Hall in Dutse last Friday deserve more than a passing headline.
Governor Namadi handed appointment letters to 2,020 young people: 1,200 who completed their training and earned permanent, pensionable status, and 820 newly recruited into the J-TEACH programme. For each of them, a piece of paper became a future with a salary and a pension, a place in the community and a reason to stay.
I find the human side of this more persuasive than the numbers. A pensionable job lets a young graduate plan a marriage, build a house and support ageing parents.
In Nigeria where so many qualified young people wait years for their first real job opportunity, that kind of security is a rare gift, and it passes straight into the lives of the pupils they will teach.
Consider, too, the tone the governor chose. He did not pretend that the work is finished. He spoke candidly about gaps he inherited and the long road still ahead. That honesty is refreshing.
Public officials too often announce victories before the first lesson has been taught. Here, the message was that this is a continuing job and the state intends to keep at it.
The same practical instinct explains the 450 bicycles from Guaranty Trust Bank. It is easy to overlook how far a child must sometimes walk to reach a classroom. In remote communities, the road can be the biggest obstacle to learning, long before a textbook is opened. A bicycle shortens that road. It gives back time and energy, and it tells a child on the edge of the map that someone remembered them.
The bank deserves credit as well. When the private sector meets government halfway, ordinary families feel the difference.
What stands out is how the pieces fit together. Uniforms, bags and writing materials reached thousands of learners, and the new appointments follow naturally from that effort.
This is a policy that sees the whole child, from the walk to school to the lesson on the board. It is easy to build a classroom and harder to fill it with the right people. By making teachers the centre of his education drive, the governor has put the emphasis where results truly come from.
The scale of the commitment is clear in the record. Since 2023, thousands of young people have entered basic education through J-TEACH, and a large share have already moved into permanent roles after training and competitive selection.
The post-basic level tells a similar story. Add the graduate teachers deployed across the state and the hundreds of staff recruited for the Mega Schools and boarding secondary schools, and a pattern emerges. This is a deliberate strategy built over time, rather than a single day of ceremony.
Equally important is the discipline the governor attached to the exercise. He directed that postings be driven by verified need, qualifications, merit and performance, with special care to keep rural schools from slipping behind their urban counterparts again.
Anyone who has watched good teachers cluster in comfortable towns while distant villages go without will appreciate how much this matters.
Fairness in deployment is what turns a recruitment drive into real equity.
Punctuality, discipline, competence and compassion are modest words for a very large responsibility.
The teachers were also promised induction, mentoring, supervision and fair assessment, so support goes hand in hand with accountability. That balance is how a profession earns respect.
The newly appointed teachers answered in kind, pledging to follow civil service rules and to answer for their work. It is a promise worth holding them to, and the governor was right to invite traditional and religious leaders, parents and communities to do exactly that.
A school belongs to the community it serves. When the village elder, the imam and the parent all take an interest in what happens inside, teachers feel both the weight and the warmth of that trust.
Jigawa still has distance to cover, as every state does. But direction matters as much as distance, and this one is clear. A government that invests in teachers is investing in people, and it understands that buildings and gadgets matter only when someone capable stands in front of the class.
Years from now, few pupils will remember the date of a ceremony in Dutse. They will remember a teacher who showed up on time, knew the subject and believed in them. That teacher is the real dividend of what the governor has done, and it is why Jigawa’s quiet revolution in education deserves our applause.
Lawal Jet Kaugama, a commentator on national issues, writes from Kano. He can be reached on [email protected]