The Nigerian Teachers Community (NTC), a Facebook community, is to institute an annual award for the best Nigerian teacher and the best employer in Nigeria’s education space.
Dr Peter Ogudoro, NTC Founder and winner of the Study UK Alumni Awards, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Thursday.
Ogudoro said that the award was aimed at encouraging good practice with respect to teaching and leadership.
Accordingly to him, no amount has been attached to the award but it would be given by NTC, in collaboration with its its partners.
NAN reports that Ogudoro was celebrated by the British Council on Feb. 4 for outstanding social action in Nigeria’s education industry and for being an outstanding alumnus of the UK Higher Education Institutions.
He is one of the three finalists currently in the race for the Study UK Global Awards instituted by the British Council.
The alumnus of the University of Reading, UK, had also won the Facebook Community Accelerator Awards for 2021 for the work he is doing with the 500,000-member NTC.
“ Education, as we know, is the bedrock of development which, once sorted out, can make all other economic, social, political and technological challenges disappear, all other factors being equal.
“Developed countries got to where they are through their focus on education among other things, and we are moving in that direction.
“We are instituting an annual award for teachers to celebrate the best teacher and the best employer in the education space to encourage good practice with respect to teaching and with respect to leadership in education,” he said.
Ogudoro told NAN that focus on education would enable Nigeria to continue to raise the bar and be a model, at least, in Africa in the nearest future.
“We can enhance our economic base through good education, because the way we are going now and the rate at which we are moving, I see ourselves getting to the point where we reform our education and teaching practice to a level that other countries in Africa will get to look in this direction rather than going to Europe or North America in terms of where their children can school.
“This will bring in money by way of foreign exchange that has become very scarce, and that will enhance our gross domestic product and improve our per capita income; that way, the quality of life of the average Nigerian will improve,” he said.
The NTC founder called for reform in the education sector that would shift focus from teacher-centred and institution-centred learning to learner-centred teaching.
According to Ogudoro, NTC is a community of teachers, professional educators and researchers essentially from Nigeria.
He said that NTC provided such people with data that would enable them to understand education practice in Africa.
“We are using the platform to create awareness on the importance that we should place on the individuality of every child in the classroom; we are making a huge impact.
“Teachers are becoming aware that their business in the classroom is to first recognise that every child matters and to believe in the capacity of every child to become successful.
“We don’t all have to succeed along the same line; some of us are going to be engineers, some are going to be writers, some journalists, others medical doctors, traders, fashion designers, etc.
“We have to recognise all of those talents and give them room to flourish by the way we teach.
“That is what the NTC is doing, and we are happy that we are gaining international recognition and accolades,’’ he said.
Ogudoro said that the NTC, which was established on Dec. 26, 2016, had become a global hub for serving school owners, teachers, policy makers and implementers as well as business people.
