Primary school teachers in Benue state have been on a prolonged strike over non-implementation of the National Minimun Wage. The Special Adviser to Governor Gabriel Suswam on Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Prince Solomon Wombo told journalists why Benue State government cannot pay its teachers. Our correspondent, UJA EMMANUEL was there.
For some time now government has claimed it was carrying out screening of primary school teachers in the state and upon completion, payment would commence. However, there appears to be a problem somewhere as the teachers have again embarked on an indefinite strike. What went wrong?
Well, I will address the issue of screening first. It’s true that we went out to screen the teachers to be able to establish who and who were genuine teachers and those that were not genuine. We want to thank God that the screening yielded some results, at least we were able to discover that over a thousand people were on the pay roll were not genuinely our teachers and those names have been expunged. Also, we discovered that some people that are due for retirement, that are no longer productive were there and those ones were also expunged from the list. And that helped to reduce the strength of our teachers to just 15, 200 from the well over 16, 000 that we had. So, in that regards, I’d like to say the screening paid off, at least a considerable number of people that are not supposed to be on our pay roll were expunged from the pay roll. The second aspect of what went wrong; well, on our own side, I think nothing went wrong in the sense that the essence of the screening was to establish the number of teachers and pay the minimum wage. And like we said, if you’ve been part of my briefings before, I’ve always met with the press on monthly basis to brief them of happenings here, since August, we started paying salaries based on the resources available to us, there is a minimum wage.
In fact, we were one of one of the first states to implement 27.5% increment on the salary of teachers in Northern Nigeria. So, this is a precedent that has been set with regards to the welfare of teachers. And above that, the governor willingly, willingly increased the salary of teachers when he came into power. He saw that figures were not too good and that their pay packets couldn’t create any impact, he willingly increased the salary of this people without any agitation from any teacher. So, these are things that indicate good intentions, they are precedents the governor has set, that he is concerned about the welfare of the teachers. So, this background should be able to give everyone an insight into the capability of the governor in terms of handling the welfare of his own people.
So, what happens is, the local governments which I preside over is responsible for paying teachers and when we finished the screening, we now looked at our resources and how much we could pay. Now, instead of taking exactly what the federal government implemented at the national level which will not be feasible in the local government setting, we decided to do a new minimum wage structure that was in line with the resources that were available to us. Okay? If we are to implement new minimum wage on what the federal government takes, that is, adopting exactly the structure of the federal government, we will need about 2.6 billion to do minimum wage in Benue. And like I always say in my meetings, the allocation to our local governments are not hidden to anybody, they’re not. You can just google FAAC and get all the figures there, you don’t need to go any far. So, these things could be verified. Last month we had 2.8 as the statutory allocation and we had above 400 million as the cat. These are the only sources that are available to our state to utilize. So, if you are to implement what the federal government is paying federal government staff at the local government in Benue, clearly, you will not be able to pay because the money won’t be there. You know how much we get for internal revenue, it’s not a hidden thing, the figures, I publish them. So, the issue of primary school teachers and the strike, they are saying we should harmonise what the state and federal governments are paying. In fact, the NUT chairman said we should adopt what the federal government gives, that is what he said. What we are saying here is, we don’t have enough resources to adopt exactly what the federal government has done, we don’t. And it’s not an issue that is not verifiable. Like we did, we called the management of NUT and we showed them, these are our figures, this is what we have collected overtime. This is what we used it to do; we give the local governments this amount, we give SUBEB this amount, we give pension this amount, we give money for training and supervision this amount. These are statutory. And the total there is still what we arrived at. And so, this is not a gimmick, it is not politics, it’s reality, that what we have cannot pay exactly what the federal government or the state government is paying. We don’t have such money and it’s real. And they have access to our books and we have always shown them to them, that look, this is what we have and what you are demanding for cannot be paid from here. But instead of leaving you at where you were before, we will do a new salary scale based on the resources available to the state. So, this is what went wrong.
How do you distinguish between what the government is paying and what we know as the minimum wage?
I’ve said you do not set people’s salary based on their own needs. You set salaries based on the resources you have available to honour this salary obligation. If you set salaries based on the needs of the people that are working for you or what people are doing you could make a mistake. In sharing of the federal allocation, for example, the federal government does not take the same with the state, the state does not take the same with the local government. The state takes about 36 point something per cent, federal government more than 52 per cent while we take only 22. So, there is no way you can set salary the same at all levels. The negotiation was done by the federal government based on the resources of the federal government and not on the resources of the local government. So, if you go to implement what the federal government and the state are implementing, you could be making a mistake because you’ll end up not paying salary anymore because you’ll have to gather your salary, your allocation for two, three months before you’ll be able honour even one month obligation. And I said, if we are to adapt exactly what the state did, or the federal government did, you need nothing less than 2.6 billion to pay the more than 25, 200 teachers that you have in Benue and this is not possible. I said earlier that Benue local governments have the highest staff in the entire north central, we have the highest number of teachers in the entire north central and our resources are not the same.
So, when we looked at the structure of the state government and the federal and we saw that it would not be practicable here, we invited them, we told them, look at our resources, we cannot just adopt this, we’ll end up not paying salaries at all. So, look at what we have and let’s do something reasonable. And you remember I told you earlier, because of the enhancement of the salary of teachers and other workers in Benue state, our teachers were taking quite reasonable sums of money as salaries, yet we said despite the fact that they are not earning below the minimum wage, let’s increase their salary based on the resources that are available to us. We brought them, we showed them our allocation for this month, I keep repeating, go to the net and check, 2.8 billion statutory, 400 million vat, the federal government clearly said no more argumentation, whatever thing we served is what we distribute. These are things Nigerians are hearing, these are things every Nigerian is aware of, it is not from me, I don’t distribute federal allocation. It is what is given to us here that we use. So, we showed it to them, this is what we had and the only thing we can do is to cut our coat according to the size of our cloth, not according to our own size even because if you have a small piece of cloth and you go and cut it according to your size you’ll end up not wearing that coat at all. So, we have to structure our coat according to our own resources, and we said from level one to six, fine, we can adopt that because the increase is manageable. But when it begins to be unmanageable we will tinker with it a little, the difference it quite a little. But they are saying, okay, we have seen that you have increased our salary, what we are asking you is, adopt what the state and federal governments have done at the local government if not we wont accept. We are telling them and pleading with them that the resources we have cannot accommodate this. This is the point we can’t meet, that is the issue that is in contention.
