Plateau teachers protest financial autonomy for LGAs

The National Union of Teachers, NUT, chapter in Plateau has kicked against financial autonomy for local government administrations.

The teachers envisage more suffering if autonomy is granted local government administrations.

The Plateau State chairman of the union, Gunshin Yarling, made its stand known on Thursday, during a press briefing in Jos, at the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Plateau State council.

He said teachers had suffered in the hands of both the state and local governments.

According to the NUT chairman, teachers in Nigeria were already owed salaries and might face more problems at the hands of the local government administration.

“Teachers are no longer willing to go through the experience of near total collapse of primary education,” he said. “Local government councils have never taken primary education as a priority even when their allocation from the federation account was increased from 15 per cent to 20 per cent,” Mr. Yarling said.

He appealed to the Plateau State government to prevail on the Legislature not to pass the bill seeking financial autonomy for local government councils in Nigeria.

The teachers called for the scrapping of joint account for the local and state governments.

“The teachers are of the view that the joint account must be scrapped and the responsibility for the payment of salaries of primary school teachers be transferred to the state government,” he said.

Twenty-four thousand teachers are on the payroll of the Plateau State government. There were 27,000 teachers before a biometric screening exercise in which Grade 2 teachers were sacked.

Governor Jonah Jang, recently revealed that 2,000 teachers were sacked based on poor qualifications.

In October, some aggrieved primary school teachers took to the streets, protesting the non-payment of seven months salaries.