EDUCATION-BENIN: Expatriate Teachers Refuse To Return To Nigeria

By Ali Idrissou-Toure Reprint | | Print |

Ali Idrissou-Toure

COTONOU, Oct 22 1999 (IPS) - More than 90 Beninois teachers, hired to teach French in Nigeria, have refused to return to the West African country, citing poor remuneration and poor conditions of living.

The teachers claim that they did not receive the benefit package they had been promised by the Beninois officials who sent them to Nigeria. They also claim they did not get health coverage which had been paid for by French and Belgian aid organisations.

Benin also did not pay its share of their contracted salary. The only money the teachers received, during the 1998-1999 academic year, was a salary advance from the Nigerian government.

Secondary school teachers in Nigeria receive humble remuneration of about 10,000 nairas, or about 100 US Dollars per month.

The Beninois teachers got through their first year with extreme difficulty, especially those placed in areas without government housing or potable water. Several among them fell ill.

Living and working conditions were so harsh that when the teachers returned to Benin for vacation, they spoke out publicly against their plight. The project had been initiated by former Nigerian president General Sani Abacha, and executed by Benin’s former Minister of Planning and Job Development, Albert Tevoedjre.

A month after students returned to school, the Beninois teachers are refusing to return to Nigeria. They have met Mathieu Kerekou, Benin’s head of state, who sympathised with them in the presence of several ministers and top journalists.

“You were left to fend for yourselves. The project was poorly planned and accorded little study”, Kerekou said. “Benin was looking to put its unemployed graduates to work but you were shunted off without serious preparation”.

Kerekou said Abacha requested French teachers after proclaiming French to be Nigeria’s second official language. He said Nigeria’s new president, Olusegun Obasanjo, had been caught unaware of the project and therefore had not included it in his budget.

Kerekou promised to contact his Nigerian counterpart and find a solution to the problem in order to allow the project to carry on.

Observers in Benin expressed surprise over Kerekou’s statement that the new Nigerian president had no knowledge of the project. In spite of administrative changes, governments always have mechanisms to provide continuity, they said.

A daily paper in Benin reprinted the joint communique signed and made public by Abacha’s successor, General Abdul Salami Abubakar, and Kerekou on Sept 13, 1998 after a visit by the Nigerian president.

In the communique, Abubakar expressed “keen desire” to witness the kick-off of the programme to send Beninois teachers to Nigeria as soon as the protocol for project was signed.

Many Nigerian intellectuals believe that Abacha got the idea to proclaim French Nigeria’s second official language as a reaction to Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth, an organisation which groups former British colonies, when his government executed Ogoni writer Ken Saro Wiwa and eight of his colleagues in 1995.

Benin’s responsibility for the programme’s failure has also been challenged.

Meeting Beninois teachers last week, President Kerekou blamed the former Minister of Planning of having diverted Japanese aid money destined for the Nigerian French teaching programme.

In addition to their teacher training tuition, the Planning Minister said that the 90 teachers each received an equipment allowance of 200,000 CFA francs prior to leaving for Nigeria. While still in Benin, they also received, in 1997 the year they were hired an inclusive salary of between 66,000 and 77,000 CFA francs, depending on whether they possessed a bachelor’s or master’s degree.

One US Dollar is equal to 562 CFA francs.

At its inception, Abacha’s original vision was hugely ambitious. Not only was his goal to recruit 1000 Beninois teachers of French, but he also planned to bring in additional teachers from other French-speaking neighbours, Niger, Togo, and Chad.