Experience, they say, is the best teacher and in the case of Hon. Samuel Mariere, that adage appears to be shaping the future of primary education in Delta State.
Appointed as Chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Mariere has quickly translated his rich background as a lawyer, farmer, and politician into a whirlwind of reforms aimed at restoring discipline, commitment, and productivity in Delta’s primary schools.
From community engagements to rigorous staff screening and teachers retraining, his agenda is quietly changing the long lackadaisical culture of the sector.
Like he said, that his love for public education is rooted in personal experience.
“I am a product of public schools,” he once told SouthernVoicenews.Com.
“My primary, secondary, and even university education were all in public institutions. I never attended private schools.”
Such experience has fueled his drive to overhaul Delta State primary education system, aligning his vision with that of Governor Sheriff Oborevwori to ensure no child is left out of quality basic education.
Immediately after his resumption, Mariere embarked on a comprehensive familiarization tour across host communities, towns, and kingdoms. The goal was not just to introduce himself, but to build trust, educate stakeholders, and enlist their support in protecting school properties and implementing government policies.Traditional rulers and community leaders, impressed by his approach, have since pledged to safeguard school infrastructures and support teachers posted to their communities, an early sign that the reform is gaining grassroots support.
*Rebuilding Discipline Through Training And Retraining
One of the first gaps Mariere identified was in teacher capacity. Despite years of service, many primary school teachers had not received systematic training on modern teaching methods, classroom management, or school administration. To address this, he launched a robust training and retraining program covering all 25 local government areas of the state.
Teachers were trained in key areas such as innovative teaching techniques, child‑centred learning, classroom discipline, school management systems, and basic child psychology. These sessions not only sharpen skills but also subtly reinforced professional ethics and accountability. For many teachers, it was their first exposure to such structured developmental programs, and the changes are already visible in improved lesson delivery and classroom organisation.Hon. Samuel Mariere,Chairman State Universal Education Board SUBEB
*Sanitising The System: Holistic Screening In Action
Even as training rolled out, Mariere noticed a major obstacle to reform which is ghost workers and absentee staff. Some teachers were reportedly absent from duty posts yet still receiving salaries, undermining morale in the system and creating unfair workloads for others. To sanitize SUBEB, Mariere, initiated a holistic screening exercise across the state.
The screening, which has drawn mixed reactions, aims to verify the true number of active teachers, remove those who no longer exist or have abandoned their posts, and detect irregularities in the payroll including those that have falsify their ages and those who are so aged and sick but have refused to voluntarily write for retirement. According to Mariere, the exercise has exposed a number of individuals who should not have been in the system, clearing the way for a cleaner, more accurate workforce database. While critics accuse him of intimidation, especially with talk of sacking sick teachers, Mariere presents the process as a necessary audit to restore integrity and efficiency. To him, most of the problems with public schools is the teacher as he gave a very specific example. He said, “Sometimes in a community, you see beautiful government structures with good seating arrangements and desk in place, but parents and guardian still prefer taking their children and wards to an uncompleted building private schools and even begging to pay, what do you think is the cause he asked.” Mariere, told this reporter that; “At my age, there are some persons I should be calling sister or aunty, but they are still in the system teaching and collecting salaries whereas, they are no longer active and capable. So parents sometimes look at these factors and conclude that they cannot take or hand over their kids to such old or aged persons as teachers.
“This is what I am out to correct. I am not doing this for myself but for the future and revival of primary education in the state.”
*Community Ownership And School Protection
Beyond the classroom, Mariere’s reforms are also strengthening the social contract between schools and communities. By engaging traditional rulers and community leaders, he has turned primary schools into shared responsibility projects. Many chiefs now see school properties as communal assets, pledging to protect school buildings, desks, and equipment from theft or vandalism.This renewed sense of ownership is slowly reducing the culture of neglect that once plagued many rural schools. In places where teachers once felt isolated and unsupported, communities are now more willing to provide security, basic amenities, and even informal support. It is a subtle but powerful shift in attitude that could have long‑term benefits for enrolment and retention.
*Level 14 Promotion Bar For Primary School Teachers
On these, Mariere, during a telephone interview, admitted that though it is a policy they met as a government that allows Primary School Teachers to be capped at level 14. The reasons he said was the initial policy that puts the highest qualification to work in the primary school as the Nigeria Certificate For Education (NCE), but said, due to lack of interest and low patronage of Colleges of Education, the authority had at that time envisage shortage of teachers, hence graduate teachers from the Universities were employed to work in primary schools. He however disclosed that the Nigeria Union of Teachers and the Association of Primary School Heads of Nigeria (AOPSHON), are seriously interfacing with the governor, and noted that they have gone far on it, but promised that the state governor will soon set up a committee to look into it.
The Vision For A New Delta Primary Education
At the heart of Mariere’s project is a vision to make Delta’s primary education system both functional and formidable. By combining discipline driven reforms, capacity building, and community engagement, he is trying to address both the human and structural weaknesses that have held back the sector.
Critics argue that the screening and voluntary retirement talk may be harsh, but, no doubt, it has yielded positive results. In some local government areas, the salary wage bills of teachers that have traveled out of the country or abandoned d their duty post, but still receive their salaries rose to 10 million, 20 million and even 31 million naira monthly. Such amount if injected into primary education in a local government in a month, will improve and adds enormous values to teaching and learning.
In all these however, Mariere supporters have said the price of transformation is often discomfort. As the dust settles on the ongoing reforms, one thing is clear, Hon. Samuel Mariere is not just running SUBEB as a political office, but he is treating it as a mission to rebuild the foundation of Delta’s future one classroom at a time.
Godwin-Maria Utuedoye is the Publisher of SouthernVoiceNews.Com and a Journalist. He writes from Ughelli, Delta State
