SCANDAL! Edo State Primary School Teacher Couldn't Read Own Certificate.

Nigeria is a country where influence covers everything, a land where even if you are heavenly qualified and you have got no backbone or highly placed godfathers, you go nowhere. A country where someone who cannot read, teaches.

How can a teacher who reads to her audience/students for a living be dumbfounded by stage fright? I think a teacher should be able to read even in their sleep.

This is the case of Mrs Augusta Odenwingie, a teacher who teaches at Asologun Primary School, Ikpoba Okha Local Government Area of Edo State. Mrs Odenwingie couldn't read a sworn affidavit she tendered as part of her credentials when the Edo State governor, Gov. Adams Oshiomole, paid an unsheduled visit to the State Staff Training Centre venue where the verification of certificates of Primary School Teachers in Edo State is going on.

On arrival at the venue, the governor took time to go through some of the teacher's credentials and documents presented and when Mrs. Odenwingie took her turn for the exercise, the governor who listened to her defence asked her to read the affidavit she presented along with her documents. Mrs Odenwingie started stuttering and read the affidavit like a kindergarten pupil who is learning to read. 

The governor who was shocked that a teacher could not read said "If you can't read, what do you teach the pupils? What do you write on the board?"

Comrade Patrick Ikosimi, the chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) who was also at the screening to monitor the exercise, described the teacher's failure to read properly as an embarrassment. 

I think this exercise should be conducted in all states of Nigeria because primary education is a fundamental education for a child and it's very important to state and national development. If the fundamental education of a child is poor, it goes a very long way to affect the child's academic performance in the future. I can't deny the fact that many factors might have been the cause of the teacher's inability to read; it may be that she has eye problem, or the affidavit wasn't clearly written, or it was tension, or perhaps, she was intimidated by the governor's presence.., because this is not the first screening she has gone through in her career. Inasmuch as there are so many reasons why she failed to act like an abled teacher, such abnormalities should not be condole in public services.