Abdulfattah Olajide
29 July 2008
The four-weeks old strike embarked upon by the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) may be called off today following a preliminary agreement the union reached with the National Governors Forum in Abuja yesterday.
The NUT agreed to call an emergency meeting of its National Executive Council within twenty four hours to "address" the governors' request that the strike be suspended while negotiations over the teachers' demands continue.
In a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting between NUT and the Governors Forum, it was resolved that a joint committee of the two bodies be established "to negotiate the issues of teachers' salary structure which led to the strike in the first place". Kaduna State Governor, Architect Namadi Sambo, will head the committee, which also has as members the Deputy Governors of Osun and Ebonyi states, and the Commissioners for Education of Kwara, Nasarawa, Yobe, and Akwa Ibom States, as well as NUT representatives.
Chairman of the National Governors Forum, Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State, read the communiqué which was signed by himself, NUT's Acting President, Comrade Onem Nelson Onem, NUT's Secretary-General, Obong Ikpe Obang, and President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Alhaji Abdulwaheed Omar.
The meeting also resolved that no teacher should be victimised for participating in the strike, and acknowledged the rights of workers to demand better conditions of service.
Speaking with reporters after the meeting, Comrade Onem said NUT was no longer expecting the Federal Government to issue a circular on the new Teachers Salary Scale (TSS), the union's main demand in the last few weeks. "If we were still expecting a circular from the Federal Government, we wouldn't be here," he said.
NUT may have redirected its agitation to the states sequel to last Wednesday's declaration by the Minister of Education, Professor Igwe Aja-Nwachukwu that the Federal Government had no business with teachers since it has no teachers in its service.
Aja-Nwachukwu made the remark soon after last week's meeting of the Federal Executive Council. He said the teachers in the unity schools owned by the Federal Government are not teachers but civil servants, since they pay their union check-off dues to the Civil Service Union, rather than to NUT.
According to the minister, negotiations over the teachers' demand for a new Teachers Salary Scale (TSS) should be between NUT and state governments.
He said the Federal Government has no constitutional right to negotiate teachers' salary on behalf of state governments. Professor Aja-Nwachukwu also said the unity school teachers have since been shunning the NUT strike because they are not members of the union. He urged the NUT to call off the strike and negotiate with the various state governments.
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