Education has become a class issue ―NUT

The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) has said that inability of government to provide quality and affordable basic education to her citizenry caused proliferation of private schools which charge exorbitant fee with less service.

Speaking at the sixth quadrennial delegates’ conference of the union in Ilorin on Wednesday, the Kwara State Chairman of the NUT, Musa Abubakar, said that, “education which is a right has today become a class issue.”

Abubakar, who described the current privatisation and commercialisation of schools in the country as undemocratic and anti people, said that it was a deliberate ploy to surcharge the masses.

“After all, those in government today went to public schools. I therefore challenge all our political office holders to lead by example by withdrawing their children from the exorbitant private schools to public schools. This will no doubt strengthen the system of primary education in this country”, he said.

The NUT boss also said that teachers in both primary and junior secondary schools in the state were being owed four months salaries and various degrees of percentages.

“Payment of salary to primary and junior secondary school teachers under the management of Universal Primary Education Board has become a thing of concern to all lovers of education. Immediately after general elections in 2015, primary school teachers either received salary on prorate basis or in percentages.

“This abysmal situation has raised a lot of fundamental issues and hardship to teachers. Despite, the intervention by the Federal Government using bailout and Paris Club refunds, yet the problems still persist.

“Despite several calls the government there is no ray of hope that this problem will be solved, because allocation to local government where primary school teacher’s salary is drawn is overloaded and consistently dwindling.

“I therefore call on the state government to come to our aide by looking for alternative source of augmentation to pay primary school teachers full salary and other entitlements”, he said.

On local government autonomy, the number one teacher in the state said, “our concern is not the issue of autonomy but as critical stakeholders the plight of our members and the system itself. In view of this, we wish to propose that allocation from the federation account be reviewed upward in favour of the states to enable them discharge their constitutional responsibilities as contained in the Supreme Court judgement of 2002 between Attorney General of the Federation and Attorney General of Abia State and 35 others.”