It appears that the Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) runs a website worth over N75 million that is dedicated to interior furnishing.
TRCN is a federal agency, which regulates entry into the teaching profession has a furniture selling sub-domain for its Teacher Information System (TIS) database site.
EduCeleb.com recalls that the TIS was created in 2018 to keep an online database of qualified teachers in the Nigerian education system.
While speaking at a forum in Ibadan back in January last year, the TRCN Registrar, Professor Josiah Ajiboye was quoted to have said that the TIS database was going to be functional then.
In his words, “this year (2018), the development Teacher Information Systems (TIS) will become functional. Parents in Nigeria will be able to know those who are teaching their children in school whether quack or professional teachers.
“They will be able to make decisions on where to take their ward to for education purposes. The TIS will be useful for knowing the spatial distribution of teachers in Nigeria, their location and their states.”
Back in 2017, EduCeleb.com also reported Ajiboye who said that the agency had registered over 2 million teachers while stating that the TRCN would also enforce TIS implementation in private schools by January 2019.
But over a year and six months after its supposed operations, the platform is yet to serve that purpose. When this reporter initially visited tis.trcn.gov.ng over a month ago, the content showed that the agency does not currently have the said database in place.
A check on the day of filing this report shows that the content remained the same.
Rather than having any information about the TIS, any visitor would presume “Habitatery,” an American-based furnishing company owns the TRCN site.
The difference is that the TRCN TIS website has a design not similar to that of the actual Habitatery website but the contents are.
Millions budgeted and funded
Between 2017 and 2019, the TRCN had budgeted millions of naira towards gathering data and imputing on same on the TIS website. Over 60% of the said budget was funded in two years, EduCeleb.com can report.
In 2017, the sum of N54.3 million was allocated to the project for “data collection, collation and analysis.” An additional N11.81 million was budgeted in 2018.
From the recently passed 2019 budget, N7.98 million was allocated to the project.
Whereas, it had commenced two years earlier, the TIS database development was tagged “new” in the 2019 budget.
We are working on it – TRCN
TRCN boss, Ajiboye in his reaction to this discovery early May initially claimed that was because the site server was down. When offered further explanation on what the site looked like, he said that officials of the agency were working to correct the anomaly.
Speaking with EduCeleb.com, he said the content displayed was being corrected and would have been effected within the following week.
In his words, “They would resolve that. You can check back maybe next week.”
“I think they are trying to upgrade certain things there. They are trying to update the names of teachers and things like that. It is undergoing upgrading.”
He was however evasive to answer further questions when contacted.
As at the time of publishing this report, the TIS website still shows features of the furniture site.
