NUT laments loss of member to Boko Haram insurgents

Again, the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) Borno State council have regretted the loss of one of their members to the brutish hands of Boko Haram insurgents, recently.

The chairman regretted that his colleague, Zanna Wulgo, who was on a military protected convoy headed for Gamboru Ngala for an assignment beneficial to the people, lost his life when he was left alone to fix his car which broke down which made him fall out of the convoy.

Abiso told newsmen in Maiduguri that he could not state if Wulgo lost his life because  he was abandoned by the military who control vehicles traversing dangerous routes in the state or he voluntarily agreed to be left alone to fix his car in such a dangerous route.

“Our colleague was the chair of the Maiduguri  Metropolitan council MMC chapter of the NUT before he was brutally killed when his vehicle broke down in a convoy going to Gamboru Ngala for official assignment,” he said.

Speaking with newsmen during this year’s commemoration of World Teachers’ Day at the Ramat Square in Maiduguri, the NUT Chairman said that over five hundred teachers have been slaughtered mercilessly by the Boko Haram till date.

ALSO READ: World Teachers’ Day: Poverty, new media are challenges of teachers ―Okowa

Abiso maintained that lots of his colleagues needed psycho social attention as they too have families traumatised even as a lot need to be desired when it comes to the welfare channeled to them by the state government.

“Some of the teachers have witnessed live events where their fellow teachers or students were killed making them to remain  very much traumatised in the three senatorial regions.

“In 2013, a teacher was slaughtered right in front of his pupils and colleagues and that made most of them to swear not to go back to that school where their colleague was killed. These are some of the challenges we have had to cope with in this insurgency period,” he said.

The NUT boss called on the Borno State government to be sensitive to the plight of teachers who he argued must be on the first line of priority in terms of welfare distribution because up till now, ” leave allowances from 2012 till date have not been paid.”

He further said that rightful promotional allowances which should go with the movement of the teachers to the next level have been stalled since 2008 almost ten years ago while some are deprived of getting to level seventeen.

Comrade Abiso regretted that even the N18,000 minimum salary package which should have come to teachers since 2011, has equally been delayed in  most of the local government areas including Kwaya Kusa, Chibok, Hawul and Biu.

On the foot dragging of the government over the completion of the Borno state University, the Chairman said that it was high time the government hurry up the first campus of the institution because the facility is long over due for the state indegenes from secondary schools desirous of tertiary education.

Earlier, the acting Governor of the state, Mamman Durkwa, assured that Governor Kashim Shettima was a man with a listening ear adding that he would put all their claims before him for approval when he returns.

Regardless of the fact that the military has declared most of the major federal highways in the state safe, nobody can traverse any of them without military escorts, even when they do escort civilians,  the insurgents break the meandering line of sometimes two hundred cars like it happened recently on the Maiduguri Damboa road and grab their booties which most times include drugs for their numerous pregnant ladies and women for sex slaves.

Driving through most of the major trunk A federal roads like Maiduguri, Mafa, Dikwa, up to the Gamboru Ngala international boarders without military escort can actually be done if one is bold enough for that but the end result is always at ones own risk because the insurgents still criss cross the local government areas rebuilding what was decimated on all the sides of the Sambisa where the two Nigerian factions reside.