As we mark World Teachers’ Day today, October 5, I join citizens across the globe in honouring the men and women whose daily labour shapes minds, builds character and secures our collective future.
UNESCO’s 2025 call to “recast teaching as a collaborative profession” is not an abstract slogan but a clear reminder that teaching thrives when communities, governments and institutions work together to sustain and uplift the profession, thereby enabling teachers to teach with dignity, skill and support.
To teachers everywhere, those in large urban schools and those in small village classrooms, my appreciation is profound and personal.
Teachers are the quiet architects of society: they translate promise into competence, curiosity into mastery and potential into contribution.
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In Nigeria, and here in Kwara Central, we owe our children’s futures to hours of unseen efforts: lesson plans prepared at night, extra tuition for a struggling pupil, counsel given without reward. Such devotion deserves more than gratitude; it demands our sustained respect and practical support.
The global context is urgent. New international evidence tells us that the world must recruit tens of millions more teachers to reach universal primary and secondary education by 2030: an institutional shortfall that threatens the rights of a generation to learn.
This is not a distant technicality but a moral call: without sufficient, well-trained and motivated teachers, commitments to education remain hollow.
The challenge is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa and in many parts of Nigeria, where educational outcomes are constrained by shortages of trained staff, inadequate infrastructure and unequal access to professional development.
Completion and retention figures show that more must be done to turn enrolment into real learning. For our nation to flourish, teacher policies must be central to development strategies, not an afterthought in annual budgets.
Here at home in Kwara, our recent baseline mapping of basic education revealed a clear gap between current teacher numbers and what is required for effective learning: to reach the recommended 30:1 pupil–teacher ratio, thousands more qualified teachers are needed and must be hired, supported and retained.
This local reality mirrors a global truth: the future depends on our willingness to invest in the people who educate our children.
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What, then, should we do, practically and respectfully, to uplift teachers and elevate teaching? First, recruit deliberately: targeted hiring to fill shortages, especially in rural and hard-to-serve communities.
Second, invest in continuous professional development that promotes collaboration, mentorship and peer learning, exactly the collaborative culture UNESCO advocates, so teachers are not isolated agents but members of thriving professional networks.
Third, improve conditions of service: fair remuneration, prompt payment, safe working environments and career pathways that honour excellence.
Fourth, strengthen school infrastructure and learning materials so teachers can teach and learners can learn.
Fifth, deepen community engagement: parents, traditional leaders and civil society must see teachers as partners and support them accordingly.
Each of these measures is modest in concept but profound in cumulative effect.
To lawmakers, education officials, civic leaders and citizens of Kwara and Nigeria, the ask is clear and modest: treat teachers as the strategic asset they are.
Policies and budgets must reflect that teaching is not merely a public service but the very backbone of national progress. Partnerships with development agencies, private sector sponsors and philanthropic bodies can accelerate recruitment, training and infrastructure upgrades, turning goodwill into measurable outcomes.
As your senator, I pledge to keep education, especially teacher welfare and professionalisation, high on the legislative and advocacy agenda.
I will press for policies that expand teacher recruitment, protect working conditions and promote collaborative professional learning across our schools.
I will also support transparent investments in education that are accountable to our communities and that produce real learning gains for our children.On this World Teachers’ Day, let us speak our thanks in deeds as well as words.
Let us not only celebrate teachers with messages and ceremonies but back those messages with policies, budgets and partnerships that make teaching sustainable and attractive.
To every teacher in Kwara, in Nigeria, and around the world: thank you for the patience you show, the knowledge you share and the futures you build. Your work is noble, necessary and deeply cherished.Signed,Senator Saliu Mustapha
