The national leadership of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Wednesday, described the plight of teachers in Bayelsa State, where the government declared emergency in education, as “pitiable and pathetic”.
The angry leaders made the observation at a press conference on Wednesday in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, after a two-day consultative meeting with its state chapter.
The President, Mr. Michael Olukoya, lamented that months of unpaid salaries of teachers left them in the throes of untold hardship.
Olukoya, said the national executive of the union came to specifically meet with the state Governor, Mr. Seriake Dickson over the plight of teachers, but were told the governor was not available.
He, however, appealed to the state government to pay teachers their salaries.
He said: “The working condition of teachers here in Bayelsa is pathetic. The state of workers is nothing to write home about. Despite their working conditions, we commend the teachers for allowing maturity, peace, concord and amity to prevail.
“We have come here to plead with Governor Seriake Dickson that teachers should be paid their salaries. Look at the terrain of Bayelsa State, we have some communities that it will take some hours before you can get there. It costs money and what have you. So, we are appealing to Dickson to pay the salaries of our members.
“Next to issue of unpaid salaries is the issue of minimum wage or consolidated arrears. We stand to be challenged. We appeal that the government should not just take teachers for a ride.
“Every category of workers in Bayelsa State have been paid these arears except the teachers. Teachers, mother of all professions, why are you treating them like this? So, we want to appeal to the government of Bayelsa State that this minimum wage or consolidated arrears that have eluded teachers should be paid to them.
“If not because we have not met with the governor, we would have left back a word and you know what that means, but we know him as a gentleman and his love for education. We believe the governor will do the needful.
“So, our members should not be made the sacrificial lamb: what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. We are insisting that our members should be paid those salary arrears.”
On primary school management, Olukoya contended that there is a subsisting Supreme Court judgment that ruled that local governments should only participate in the running of the affairs of primary schools.
He noted that there was no council in Nigeria that could effectively and satisfactorily run primary school education.
He added: “We are told that here in Bayelsa, primary school management has now been given to the LGAs. We are not here to tell his Excellency how to run the state, but we are saying it as practitioners, as managers that it can never have good result. The LG as being experienced here cannot give a satisfactory mode of education.
“Do not forget, primary school is a foundation and if we want to say no to all the social ills in the country, call it Boko Haram, militancy, etc, we must not toy with the foundation – primary school.
“So, we want to appeal to the government of the state not to relinquish primary school management to local government. As we speak, LG has started lying off workers.
“We shall come back to plead with the governor that the idea of saying because there is no money, primary school is now the function of councils will not work.”
Olukoya called on the state government not to accord recognition to a body that calls itself ‘the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools’, saying that it was not known to the law as a trade union.
He said according recognition to ASUSS was an aberration, encouragement of hooliganism and antithetical to the interest of the education sector.
