Jemina Idris Bakari stood on a stage in Lagos with stories of her students back home in Taraba State — and a whole new way of teaching them. The 32-year-old Basic Science teacher had travelled from Jalingo to accept a different kind of prize: not for an exam she passed, but for a future she is now building for an entire community. She was one of 4,702 young public school teachers graduating from the MTN SAIL Teachers' Fellowship on September 10, 2026.
For years, teachers in Northern Nigeria had done what they could with chalk, a board, and very little else. Dorcas Oluwadara Dairo, a Mathematics teacher at Government Boys Science Secondary School in Kaduna State, remembers the struggle well. "Before now, we were already used to the traditional means of just using chalk and board to teach our students," she said. "Especially Mathematics that can be so boring and the students, they almost zone out of class."
That exhausting routine changed after a rigorous 16-week digital training programme. Armed with Artificial Intelligence (AI) — computer tools that can help create lessons and explain difficult ideas — these teachers turned from lecturers into dynamic guides of digital learning. For Bakari, technology finally made abstract science make sense to her rural learners. "AI helps in improving our teaching and learning, especially towards generating lesson ideas, and also helps in simplifying some of my abstract concepts," she explained. Dairo found the same magic: abstract and difficult topics now became simple to explain using the AI tools, and lesson notes came together in minutes.
The most profound change shows up where it matters most: in the students. The shift from rote memorisation — learning by repeating facts without understanding them — to interactive technology has sparked a real hunger for knowledge in their classrooms. Dairo proudly watched her students "participate better in classes" and begin taking charge of their own learning. "With the ideas about AI tools… they can go back also to actually get more information on that lesson, and then their performance has actually improved," she shared. Learners who once zoned out are now seeking out extra information on their own.
For these 4,702 educators, this graduation is both a personal victory and a lifeline for their communities. As Bakari heads home to Taraba State, she carries what she calls a joyful responsibility. "I feel honoured and grateful because I see it as not only my personal achievement, but a responsibility for me to go back to my school, to make use of what we have learnt and bring a positive change to our schools and community," she declared. With a generation of teachers now equipped to make math and science fun, a new era of learning is taking root across Northern Nigeria's classrooms.