Teachers collapse as FCT council chairs fail to implement minimum wage

Some primary school teachers under the Local Education Authority (LEA) in some area councils reportedly collapsed last week when they received their January salary and discovered that it does not reflect the new minimum wage of N70,000. Abuja Metro reliably gathered that the affected teachers, some of whom had incurred debts and hoped to pay […]

Some primary school teachers under the Local Education Authority (LEA) in some area councils reportedly collapsed last week when they received their January salary and discovered that it does not reflect the new minimum wage of N70,000.

Abuja Metro reliably gathered that the affected teachers, some of whom had incurred debts and hoped to pay part of them when the implementation of the new wage starts, were disappointed when they received the old amount in the January salary contrary to the promise made by their respective council chairmen.

It was learnt that all the primary school teachers across the six area councils received an alert of old salary for January, 2025.

A teacher, Muazu Abdulkarim, said it was quite unfortunate that the primary school teachers were still paid the old salary despite the promises made by the council chairmen.

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He said two of his colleagues, who teach in Bwari LEA Primary School, collapsed last Thursday after they had received the alert for their January salary without the reflection of the minimum wage.

He said, “Two of my colleagues, who teach at LEA primary school in Bwari Area Council collapsed last week because of the high expectations on the minimum wage that when they receive the money, they will pay off some debts and use the remaining to buy food stuffs and pay their children’s school fees.”

It was also learnt that some primary school teachers reportedly collapsed in Abaji and Kwali area councils as a result of the non-payment of the new minimum wage.

A relation of one of the teachers in Kwali, Barnabas Gambo, told our reporter on Sunday that four teachers went into coma after they had received old alerts without the reflection of the new wage.

He said the teachers were of the high hopes that they would use part of the new wage to pay some debts and settle their children’s school fees but ended up being disappointed.

He added that, “Some of these teachers even went as far as collecting loans, hoping that when the chairmen pay the new minimum wage, they can use part of it to settle debt and pay their children’s school fees but they were disappointed.”

It would be recalled that the President of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) in the FCT, Comrade Abdullahi Kabi, had on January 29 disclosed to our reporter that only Abaji, Gwagwalada and AMAC area councils had complied with the N70,000 new minimum wage.

He said the remaining area councils; Kwali, Kuje and Bwari were yet to make any move.

Meanwhile, a member of the standing committee of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) in the FCT has disclosed that the committee would reconvene next week Tuesday over the non- implementation of the new minimum wage by the area council chairmen.

He said the council chairmen, through the FCT ALGON, had written to the state NLC body pleading that the union should give them from now till March 2025 to commence the implementation of the new wage.

It would be recalled that the chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in the FCT, Comrade Stephen Knabayi, had on December 1, 2024, declared a strike action over non-implementation of their members’ N70,000 new minimum wage by the area councils’ chairmen.

The labour union later suspended the strike after an undertaking was written by the six area councils’ chairmen in which they promised to implement the new minimum wage in January 2025.

The Chairman of Kwali Area Council, who doubles as the FCT ALGON chairman, Danladi Chiya, did not respond to calls and text messages sent to him on why the council chairmen failed to fulfill the promises made in the undertaking they signed with the labour leader late last year.