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Nigeria: Rivers Govt Dares FG Over States Teachers' Salary
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Vanguard (Lagos)
9 July 2008
Posted to the web 9 July 2008
Leon Usigbe
Rivers State government has rejected the idea of the Federal Government fixing the salaries of teachers in the state services as being demanded by the striking members of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) as it maintains that the responsibility belongs to the various state governments.
The Deputy Governor of the state, Engineer Tele Ikuru, told journalists in Abuja, yesterday, that even though the issue was now before the Federal Government, acceding to the request of the teachers would jeopardize the labour force as other employees in the state were likely to agitate for a raise in their remunerations.
According to him, "employment of teachers is purely a state matter. I can't see how the Federal Government will sit down in Abuja and fix wages for teachers because when you fix for teachers, don't forget that we doctors also are a very important sector of the economy.
"They will also come with their own demands. Of course, we have engineers; they will come with their demands, we have lawyers. Show me who is not important in the scheme of things. At the end of the day, I think the Federal Government should deal squarely with the Federal staff and allow the states to deal with their own staff.
"If teachers in Rivers State have demands, they should meet and discuss with the state government and will examine our budget and see what we can do and see what we cannot do. In Rivers State, we have overcome labour/government division.
"Each time we receive our allocation, we bring it out for all to see and ask how we spend it. If we must use 80% of the money to service 10% of the population and leave the other 90% to die and wallow in poverty, let it be a decision jointly taken by all of us," he said.
The Deputy Government who maintained that Rivers State has the best condition of service for civil servants in the country however noted that the state would wait for the outcome of the negotiations between the Federal Government and NUT and "whatever decision is reached at the federal level, if we at the state look at it and see that it is something we can implement, why not? We will implement it."
Engr. Ikuru remarked that the state had set aside N16 billion this year for the eradication of poverty from which it planned to train 100 "gifted" students in the "best" academic environment possible within the country under its Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency.
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"These children will have the privilege of learning with the children of ministers, the children of governors, the children of ambassadors and then because they already have the attitude to learn, when they come out, they will become pillars of their families and by so doing, we have broken the cycle of poverty in their families," he argued.
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