500,000 teachers’ recruitment portal crashes on day one

Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu

Adelani Adepegba and Friday Olokor

The recruitment of 500,000 teachers by the Federal Government might have run into a hitch as the website for the exercise crashed on Sunday following what was suspected to be massive applications by prospective candidates.

The Federal Government had, last week, announced that the recruitment of the teachers would commence on Sunday, directing interested Nigerians to apply through http://portal.npower.gov.ng.

But attempts by one of our correspondents to register on the portal around 6.48pm on Sunday failed as the website was not available.

Checks indicated that the portal might have crashed due to heavy traffic.

The website carries a message, “An error occurred. Sorry, the page you are looking for is currently unavailable. Please, try again later. If you are the system administrator of this resource, then you should check the error log for details. Faithfully yours, nginx.”

When contacted for the number of applications through the website so far, the Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Education, Anthony Akuneme, said it was too early to know the number.

He said, “The recruitment process is on. The website has been publicised in the media. It is too early to get the response and number of applicants since it just began.”

President Muhammadu Buhari had, in his Democracy Day speech, said the recruitment of the teachers would commence on June 12.

The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, also stated that the recruitment would be done online.

Akande, in a statement last Wednesday, said the 500,000 Teacher Corps, nicknamed N-Power Teach on the portal, was one of the three direct job creation and training schemes established by the current administration.

Others, according to him, are N-Power Knowledge, which will train 25,000 Nigerians in technology, and N-Power Build, which will train another 75,000 in building services, construction, utilities, hospitality and catering, automotive vocation, aluminium and gas services.

He explained that all trainees would be paid for the duration of their training.

Akande added, “The N-Power Teacher Corps initiative, which will engage and train 500,000 young unemployed graduates, is a paid volunteer programme of two-year duration.”