NUT begs Dickson to pay teachers’ salaries

The Bayelsa State chapter of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) Saturday passionately begged the state Governor, Mr. Seriake Dickson, to pay salaries of primary school teachers.

Teachers, like other workers in the state, have been thrown into hardship following the non-payment of about six months salaries owed them by the government.

Speaking in Yenagoa, the state capital, the Principal Secretary, NUT, Mr. Okoro Okechukwu and the state Chairman, NUT, Mr. Bokolo Tonworio, asked the governor to take responsibility for the welfare of teachers including regularly paying their salaries.

Okechukwu said the law in Nigeria prescribes that the maintenance of primary, adult and vocational education should be the responsibility of the state government.

He said it was unconstitutional for any state government to allow only the local government to decide the fate of teachers.
He said the fourth schedule of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution stated that the local government “shall only participate” in catering for teachers, which he said gave the state the main responsibility of funding the sub-sector.

He said: “Then in May 2002, the Supreme Court gave a verdict in the case of the Attorney-General of Abia State, and the Attorney-General of the Federation.

“The court said ‘on the tier of government responsible for primary education, in so far as primary education is concerned, a local council only participates with the state government, in its provision and maintenance. The functions obviously remains with the state government’.

“The provision of this judgement of the Supreme Court is still the position of the law till tomorrow, and what the Supreme Court merely did was to interpret a section of the provision of the fourth scheduled that it remains the functions of the state government.

“Therefore, it is wrong for any state government to heap the burden of funding primary education upon the local government councils”.
Speaking about Bayelsa scenario, he said: “In our case in Bayelsa, the local councils lack or are already showing or exhibiting the incapacity to pay their workers and if our primary schools teacher are pushed down to the already erring local council, it means there is no future, no hope, and that the case of primary school teacher in Bayelsa becomes a helpless situation.
“That is why we are appealing on the executive Governor Dickson who knows the laws better than I do, to do all he can to make sure that the burden is not heaped on the local councils alone.
“As it is done in other states, let the state and local council jointly participate obeying the constitution in the funding of primary education so that the primary education to the citizenry is guaranteed and the welfare and the monthly regular salary of the teacher who teach in Bayelsa will be assured”.
Also, speaking on the matter, Tonworio, appealed to the governor to toe the path of other states in carrying primary school teachers along.

He said the primary school education remains the bedrock of education and asked the state not to destroy the sub-sector.
He said: “Where the primary education is destroyed, the future of Bayelsa State is destroyed and that is why we are at the level we are today. All along, he has been carrying them along, so whatever must have transpired, let the governor reconsider and carry the Bayelsa state primary schools education along.”

The Nation.