Ending the embarrassing strike of teachers and health workers in Abuja

The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) was caught up in a whirlpool of protests by several trade unions last week, in solidarity with primary school teachers and healthcare workers who have been on strike for about four months over unpaid salaries and allowances. Workers in the FCTA are aggrieved too, over discrepancies in their salaries; and non-payment of some hazard or peculiar allowances due to them.

Since 24 March, these teachers and healthcare givers have been facing severe economic hardship in the six Abuja Area Councils, as their employers have refused to implement the ₦70,000 new national minimum wage. This is an embarrassment that should have jolted the authorities into action towards a resolution of the impasse.

As costs of living spiked nationwide with the removal of fuel subsidy and deregulation of the foreign exchange market shortly after President Bola Tinubu assumed office in 2023, the government tried to mitigate the impact on workers with a 25 per cent salary increase, first; and then a subsequent ₦35,000 wage award. These gestures were greeted with a profound sense of relief.

The minimum wage bill was signed into law in 30 July 2024. In May this year, the federal government began paying the ₦35,000 wage award arrears in instalments for five months. But Abuja Municipal, Kuje, Abaji, Bwari, Kwali and Gwagwalada Area Councils have refused to discharge their obligations to the workers. It is a scandal that rocks not these councils alone, but the entire nation.

Admittedly, with the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the financial autonomy of the country’s 774 local government areas in its 11 July 2024 judgment, the payment of salaries of this category of public sector workers has become the responsibility of the councils. This is in sync with the 1999 Constitution, as amended, which places the running of primary schools and primary healthcare facilities under the statutory duties of local governments.

As other local governments across the states of the federation are implementing the new wage, why has the case of the Abuja Area Councils been different, despite their improved revenues in the present dispensation? This deserves a special enquiry.

Basic education is a right of every Nigerian child, as reinforced by provisions of the Universal Basic Education Act of 2004 in Section 2 (1), which made this “free and compulsory.” Therefore, to keep pupils at home, instead of being in their classrooms for this long, is a most insensitive act of governance. Apparently, it highlights the lip-service paid to education in the country.

If these pupils could be abandoned at home by the government, despite protests from a broad spectrum of concerned unions and Nigerians, then the claim of education as the bedrock of the country’s development, and the routine exhortation of students as future leaders, reeks of rank hypocrisy and deceit.

Education and health form the most critical indices of human development. A nation without a solid foundation in these areas faces a perilous future. As such, PREMIUM TIMES is deeply concerned about any further delay in settling this matter. The FCT minister, Nyesom Wike, held a meeting with representatives of the Councils’ chairmen and Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) last Thursday, which did not end the deadlock, except for offering a window for additional dialogue, as the NUT insisted on going back to report the decision reached to its members.

Earlier, a similar strategy was tried in May that was ineffectual. Mr Wike had set up a panel chaired by the Minister of State for the FCT, Mariya Mohamoud, to resolve the impasse. He even paid 40 per cent of the 25-month arrears in question, which ought to have inspired the councils to clear the remaining backlog. But they did not. He has also appealed to the House of Representatives to intervene.

The lack of the councils’ prioritisation of the payment of their workers’ salaries provoked Mr Wike’s recent outburst: “The Area Council Chairmen, after I have approved money to be sent to them to be able to pay the teachers, they were unable to do that… I don’t know why people don’t have conscience.” This official dereliction of duty should be dealt with squarely, for it not to be contagious in the country.

Before the latest long-drawn strike, workers in these councils had in 2023 and 2024 embarked on a series of short-lived industrial actions to compel response to their situation, which were to no avail. In spite of the obvious fact that paying these striking workers is outside the remit of the FCTA, Mr Wike should do more than he has done so far to end this reprehensible situation. The FCT Committees in both the Senate and House of Representatives exist for oversight functions and to deal with critical matters such as this crisis, which they are yet to make any impact on. Besides, the National Assembly is constitutionally the FCT’s parliament, and needs to make a bolder intervention in the matter.

Importantly, President Tinubu needs to equally pay attention to the plight of these teachers. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was confronted with a similar dilemma on a national scale in 2003, when teachers were owed salaries for months across the federation, in a negligence that threatened the success of the universal basic education policy.

The embarrassment was then arrested with the federal government’s direct payment of the teachers by deducting their salaries at source, before disbursing allocations to the other tiers of government. But we need not return to that system of the federal taking over the responsibilities of local governments.

A sticking point in all of this is the seeming abuse of the reclaimed financial autonomy of the local governments. By virtue of the apex court declaration, the councils will be getting their allocations directly from the federation account. If the six Abuja Area Councils cannot pay their workers, then they should be made to explain what they are doing with their funds.

READ ALSO: Available scholarships to study in the United States, By DeWayne P. Frazier

Nigeria has over 20 million out-of-school children, according to UNESCO. Missteps of governance, as are in the Abuja councils, explain why public schools have collapsed and parents constantly withdraw their children and wards from them in preference for private schools.

Several media accounts show that Local Education Authority primary schools in Abuja are in dilapidated conditions, with pupils sitting on bare floors to learn, while some classrooms have leaky roofs and get flooded, just as the shortage of teachers persist. Ultimately, these absurdities produce the oxymoron of “teaching without learning” that UNESCO once observed. PREMIUM TIMES is strongly calling for an end to this unfortunate trajectory of trifling with the education and future of the Nigerian child.