Strike: FCT pupils may lose 1 year –NUT chair
The chairman of the FCT wing of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Abdullahi Mohammed Shafas, has warned that there might not be new intake into Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) 1 this year in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) if the ongoing strike by the primary schools’ teachers lingers. Shafas gave the warning on […]
Chairman, FCT UBEB, Dr Hassan Suleiman, addressing primary school pupils at Narai in the Abuja Municipal Area Council recently
The chairman of the FCT wing of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Abdullahi Mohammed Shafas, has warned that there might not be new intake into Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) 1 this year in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) if the ongoing strike by the primary schools’ teachers lingers.
Shafas gave the warning on Tuesday during a phone-in programme on the network service of Radio Nigeria, which was monitored by Abuja Metro.
The union leader warned that pupils in primary six in all the public schools in the territory may not to be admitted into JSS 1 in September due to what he called lukewarm attitude of the six area council chairmen, who he said have failed to address the demands of the striking teachers.
According to him, the council chairmen have continued to pay deaf ears to the demands of the teachers, saying three different agreements were reached with the council chairmen and were all reneged.
He said, “You see, due to the lukewarm attitude of our council chairmen, they failed to see it as a responsibility to pay these monies. They pay deaf ears to some of these issues. In the FCT, you cannot say because primary schools’ teachers are under the local government councils, they are not entitled to the benefits other civil servants in the FCT are enjoying.”
He queried, “Don’t we live in the same FCT? Are we not suffering the same fate? Am I not a teacher? Don’t I leave my community to come to the school? Don’t I fuel my car to come to the school?”
He said the union has a lot of pending demands that the council chairmen were yet to respond to, noting that the federal government’s new minimum wage was given to teachers in junior and senior secondary schools, civil servants and other government agencies but the primary school teachers were left out.
He said, “They left out those who are supposed to build the foundation of education. Now that we have been at home for over two months – both the teachers and children – who will fill the junior secondary schools? This is to say this year, the junior secondary schools might not have new intakes. That is what it means if this strike does not end quickly for the teachers to go back to classes and make amendments so that the pupils in primary six can sit for the qualifying exams.”
He said in the next session, there is likely not going to be JSS 1, except only children from private schools and according to him, children of the poor masses in the rural communities will be left out.
What the teachers are demanding
The FCT NUT chairman said there were peculiar allowances paid to civil servants, including the junior and senior secondary teachers in the FCT, which had not been paid to the primary schools’ teachers.
He said, “There is also a 25 and 35 percent salary increment given by the federal government to other civil servants, including junior and senior secondary schools’ teachers but were not given to primary schools’ teachers. Why is it so? And you want them to work and commute from their community to their workplaces, mostly in rural communities?”
According to him, the council chairmen also failed to implement the teachers’ promotion arrears for several years now.
Reacting to the move by the council chairmen to sue the FCT Administration in an event it uses their Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to pay the teachers demands, the NUT chairman said, “If the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, will use the councils’ Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to pay the teachers, let him do it. Let the local government chairmen take him to court, they will be exposed. They signed three agreements with us. If they go to court, do you think the court will just overlook them?
“Even if you go to the Industrial Court or whatever court, if you think they will leave you, they will not. The workers have their court. So, I beg the minister to go ahead to do everything possible to ensure that monies meant for the teachers hit their accounts. If he does so, I think he will be making good records in the FCT and the teachers will eulogize his good works.”
Calls and text messages sent to the FCT chairman of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) and chairman of Kwali Area Council, Danladi Chiya, were not answered as at the time of filing report.