- …says ‘enough is enough’
The National President, Nigeria Union of Teachers, Michael Olukoya-Alogba, has warned that members of the union may soon embark on a nationwide strike, if the salaries of teachers in some states are not paid.
The NUT president said that the union would no longer condone the ill-treatment always meted out to teachers across the country, saying this would be the final warning to concerned authorities.
Olukoya-Alogba made this threat in a chat with our correspondent against the backdrop of the non-payment of salaries of teachers in some states.
He said that the matter had got to a head and the teachers could no longer endure the hardship brought upon them by the government’s failure to pay them their salaries and other benefits at the appropriate time.
He said, “The non-payment of salaries or portion payment, or deciding how much to pay on a monthly basis, not paying our members when they retire, working conditions of teachers, all these are challenges and we take joy in highlighting these challenges to people that matter.
“Tell the government, our employers, that we will not allow this to continue, it is not going to be sympathy as before. All the states that are owing – 17 of them, we have given them the last warning, that if the trend should continue, we should not be held responsible because the moment we now go on strike, or we try to tell our people to do so, they will be saying that we are being sponsored.
“Now that people are owing us in Benue – almost one year (primary school); other categories of workers, eight months. In Kogi, the same thing. In Nasarawa, percentages; in Plateau, just mention them like that.
“We have seized the opportunity on the 5th (World Teachers’ Day) to tell them that look, enough will soon be enough. Again, apart from the welfare, we have the working condition of teachers. Our schools, many of them, no furniture. Infrastructural decay. We are not going to allow this to continue.”
The NUT national president added that the various tiers of government in the country had continued to violate the directive of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation by refusing to allocate 26 per cent of their annual budgets to the education sector.
He said, “UNESCO has given a directive that 26 per cent of the total budget of any tier of government should go to education. How many of them are doing it? Even from Federal to the local government, how many of them are doing it?
“As long as we don’t have our education sector correct, as long as you don’t have adequate investment in education, that is the end of that government. That means all these social menace will continue. Until we have our bearings right, we may continue to chase shadows. You cannot imagine that somebody would work for 35 years only to retire into poverty and penury. All these must be checked and corrected.”
Olukoya-Alogba restated the union’s opposition to the granting of autonomy to local government councils, saying teachers would not subscribe to a system that would deprive them of their rights and entitlements.
“We have told them this year it is not going to be an annual rhetoric. We are going to match it up with action and we are going to start from all these orchestrated local government autonomy. We are not opposed to it as teachers, but don’t tie primary education to local government autonomy, because he that wears the shoes knows where it pinches and experience they say is the best teacher,” he said.
