FCT pupils remain at home as teachers’ strike lingers

Two weeks after teachers in public primary schools in the FCT began strike, pupils of the schools are still loitering on the streets, City & Crime can report. While some of them now follow their parents to the farm, others, especially those in the city centre, make use of any available playground nearby to play […]

Two weeks after teachers in public primary schools in the FCT began strike, pupils of the schools are still loitering on the streets, City & Crime can report.

While some of them now follow their parents to the farm, others, especially those in the city centre, make use of any available playground nearby to play football.

City & Crime reports that shortly after schools in the FCT resumed for the first term academic calendar, the teachers withdrew from classes in what they called an indefinite strike to press home their demands.

Some of their grievances include the non-payment of the remaining 60 per cent of the 25 months minimum wage arrears as well as other entitlements by the area council chairmen.

Our correspondent, who has been monitoring the feud between the LEA teachers and the six area council chairmen, reports that the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, had intervened during their last strike by paying 40 per cent of the areas while the council chairmen promised to pay the remaining 60 per cent, a pledge the teachers said the chairmen had failed to fulfil.

Addressing journalists at the end of the FCT executive council meeting held at the Teachers’ House in Gwagwalada, the chairman of the FCT wing of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Abdullahi Mohammed Shafas, said his members had no option than to resume the strike earlier suspended on the same issue because of the non-response from the six area council chairmen to the 14-day ultimatum earlier issued to them.

Since then, all public primary schools in the nation’s capital had remained closed with the pupils roaming on the streets.

City & Crime on Wednesday met one of the pupils in Bwari, Jame Ishaya, who was returning from the farm with his family members.

When asked why he was coming from the farm instead of being in school, Ishaya, who is in Grade 3, simply said, “We were asked to go back home the last time we went. It is like they said our teachers are not being given money and they pursued us from the school. You too can go to the school you will see that even the teachers are not there.’’

Ishaya said he has been following his dad to the farm since then, but that he was ready to go back to school whenever the teachers called them back.

“Sir, every day I used to go and check if they opened the gate of our school so that I could go but since then, it is only our mai guard (gateman) that I always see there,’’ he added.

At the city centre, City & Crime bumped into a group of primary school pupils playing football at one of the schools in Jabi district of Abuja.

Although there was no school, the gate of the school was thrown open and the children were using the opportunity to play football on a field there.

All attempts to speak with any of them proved abortive as they were busy with their game.

Meanwhile, some parents have appealed to the FCT minister to intervene again by calling the council chairmen to order so that the crisis could be resolved once and for all.

Madam Esther Daodu regretted that 60 per cent of the children are those of the natives, wondering why the council chairmen, who are also natives, could be adamant to the plight of their children.

Earlier, the Chairman of the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) in the FCT, Alhaji Usman Abubakar, expressed concern over the strike in the FCT, saying the action is affecting children, who are now staying idle in their homes.

He called on the stakeholders in the education sector to wade in to take the children off the streets.

Efforts to reach the chairman of Kwali Area Council, who is also the ALGON chairman in the FCT, Danladi Chiya, yielded no positive result as he neither picked calls nor replied text messages sent to him on the strike.