Frequent strike threatens ECCDE in Benue

Primary school teachers in the state have in the past two years gone on strikes three times, with the strikes lasting for periods of two to nine months in order to press home their demands for better wages. Our correspondent who visited three primary schools in Makurdi, the state capital, reports that the ECCDE programme […]

Primary school teachers in the state have in the past two years gone on strikes three times, with the strikes lasting for periods of two to nine months in order to press home their demands for better wages.
Our correspondent who visited three primary schools in Makurdi, the state capital, reports that the ECCDE programme was not implemented in two schools while the programme was barely operated in Arabic Primary School, Wadata, is just after the series of strike.
Head teacher of the Arabic primary school, Alhaji Jubrin Musa, said that the project did not exist in the school until last year when he came on board, lamenting that few weeks after the establishment of the centre, teachers in the state went on strike.
“We had just established the ECCDE with 20 pupils when we went on the nine-month strike. On return, the pupils are now less than 10. We are hoping to increase the number as we continue to talk to parents in mosques and churches.”  
Musa highlighted other challenges to include lack of textbooks, special equipment for teaching the kindergarten and nannies to care for children.
He said that because the government has only been able to supply them with some text books and registers with a promise to supply chairs, they were now able to teach the pupils how to recognise words and sounds of words.
Contacted, the state ECCDE desk officer at SUBEB, Mrs. Margaret Iortim, admitted that the nine months old strike has affected the programme.
She said that the programme has witnessed a sharp decline from an initial number of over 25, 000 pupils to less than 16, 000 while some centres have been forced to close.
“We also have the problem of paying teachers and there are lack of specialists to teach the children. Where there are specialists, they lack accommodation. In fact, strike has been our major challenge.”
Iortim added that before the strike, the number of out-of-school pupils in public primary schools in the state stood at 563.