Parents of both primary and secondary schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) under the umbrella of the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) have called on the FCT Minister Nyesom Wike to intervene in the ongoing teachers strike.
Abuja Metro reports that the strike embarked upon by the teachers on Monday, April 20, had paralysed academic activities across public primary and secondary schools in the territory.
Chairman of the PTA in the FCT, Alhaji Usman Abubakar, who made the call at a press conference in Abuja, said the resumption of strike by the teachers of both primary and secondary schools in the territory will adversely affect the future of the children.
He said the association was surprised to wake up on Monday, and discovered that pupils who resumed schools across the six area councils were turned back by their teachers due to the directive of the executives of the Nigeria Union Teachers (NUT) in the FCT.
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He said parents are worried that since 2022, the FCT authorities and other stakeholders in the education sector are still finding it difficult to find a permanent solution to the teachers strike in the territory.
"Obviously, we the parents in the FCT are worried that for over six years now, teachers are still embarking on strike over their unmet demands, which we expected the FCT administration and other stakeholders to have tackled headlong,"he said.
He said the recurring teachers' strike in the FCT has "serious adverse effects" on not only the parents but the girl-child, saying some parents end up allowing them to hawk on the streets where they end up being abused sexually.
According to him, parents are yet to recover from last year's teachers strike action, which he said lasted over 18 weeks with some girls being impregnated in the course of hawking on the streets.
Abubakar, however, said the association has confidence in Minister Wike as someone who has a passion for education, adding that Wike has built several schools and provided viable instructional materials in them across the FCT.
The PTA chairman, therefore, called on Wike and other stakeholders to invite the members of the FCT NUT to a round table in order to end the ongoing teachers strike in the interest of the students.
Meanwhile, educationists have expressed concerns over the recurrent strike actions by public school teachers in the FCT, saying the trend would further aggravate the country's out-of-school children problem.
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An educationist, Ann Nwokedi, decried the persistent strike actions by teachers in the FCT over failure by the authorities to meet their demands.
"It is disheartening that we are witnessing this kind of situation in the education sector in the nation's capital which is supposed to set the pace for other states.
"This will further compound the out-of-school children problem already being faced in the education sector. When these children stay out of the classrooms for a long time, they will begin to lose interest in education generally. This is not good for our education system", she said.
Also speaking, another education expert, Bolaji Oluwadare, said it was disturbing that despite the increase in the allocations to the area councils and FCT Administration through budgetary provisions and taxes, the demands of public school teachers were yet to be met.
