The organisation also called for the provision of decent classrooms, libraries, laboratories and other functional facilities that ease the job of teachers.
The Education Rights Campaign (ERC) has called on the Nigerian government to scale up the minimum wage for Nigerian teachers to at least N200,000.
The organisation also called for the provision of decent classrooms, libraries, laboratories and other functional facilities that ease the job of teachers.
The appeals were made in a statement to commemorate World Teachers Day, and signed by the group's National Mobilisation Officer, Adaramoye Lenin, and the Deputy National Coordinator, Isaac Ogunjimi.
"On this day, the ERC calls for the payment of a minimum wage of nothing less than N200,000 to all categories of Nigerian teachers in both public and private schools, improved working conditions and end to public education underfunding and commercialisation which is pricing education out of the reach of children from the poor working-class background," parts of the statement reads.
"We indeed call for adequate provision of teachers, decent classrooms, libraries, laboratories and other functional facilities that aid quality education in public schools such that private schools are made unnecessary or less attractive to the working class and middle-class people."
The group also called for unity between the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Private School Teachers Union of Nigeria (PRISCTUN) and called for improved pay and working conditions for all teachers and proper funding of education.
The group lamented that successive governments have failed to take care of Nigerian teachers and instead allegedly turned them into paupers while expecting quality service delivery from them and improved educational outcomes.
"Just as workers are central to the capitalist system of production as no wheel can turn without them, teachers who are knowledge producers are the lifeblood of every successful educational system," it said.
ERC said while Nigerian workers are poorly paid, Nigerian teachers stand out as the most poorly paid category of the working population.
"Furthermore, the working condition of Nigerian teachers is atrocious as they work long hours while teaching often in dilapidated, poorly lit and ventilated overcrowded classrooms with poor teaching infrastructure and an in-conducive school environment," he said.
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The group stressed that Nigerian teachers in private schools are worse off as "a huge percentage of them earn less than the minimum wage of N30,000 at a period when wages and income have lost about 75 per cent of their real value due to the impacts of fuel subsidy removal, currency devaluation and the consequential rise in inflation."
Private School Teachers union
The group berated the association of private school owners for allegedly frustrating efforts of unionising private school teachers.
"At the moment, private school proprietors are moving to prevent teachers in their employ from joining their union, the Private School Teachers Union of Nigeria (PRISCTUN), in apparent violation of Nigeria's labour laws," the group said.
"This is because they recognise that once they become unionised, private school teachers will gain the power to begin to demand a review of their terrible conditions."
"We urge the NUT, NLC and TUC to openly back PRISCTUN and help build the union so that it can be able to defend the interest of private school teachers."
Teachers income
Nigeria's current minimum wage is N30,000. However, the Nigerian government recently announced a N35,000 provisional increase for workers.
Former President Muhammadu Buhari announced a special salary scale for teachers. But it has yet to be implemented.
Other reforms implemented by Mr Buhari for the teachers were the five-year increase in the years of service.
Qosim Suleiman is a reporter at Premium Times in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe
