FCT minister wades into teachers, Kuje chairman dispute
…Orders prompt resolution of contending issues for reopening of schools.
Cyril Mbah, Abuja.
The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mallam Mohammed Musa Bello has waded into the dispute between Kuje Area Council Chairman, Alhaji Abdullahi Suleiman Sabo and the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), which declared indefinite strike over the sack of 1030 primary school teachers early this month.
The minister has directed that the parties should sit and promptly resolve the contending issues to enable closed public schools to reopen for children to go back to classes without further delay.
Disclosing this to newsmen in an interview soon after rising from one of the meetings organised to resolve the dispute, the FCT Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers, Comrade Stephen Knabayi said that the matter at stake concerns the future of education in Kuje and not only the sack of teachers who were employed but were later sacked during an election year by the same administration which confirmed their appointments last year.
Declaring the action as a huge political miscalculation, Comrade Knabayi called on the FCTA, parents and other critical stakeholders in education to call the Kuje chairman to order and to compel the council to treat teachers with greater respect and better consideration than what has been in place since the incumbent administration came into office.
The NUT Chairman advised Abdullahi Suleiman Sabo, the Kuje Area Council chairman to recall the affected teachers and cautioned that disengaging teachers at this time has political disadvantages and will greatly reduce the capacity of under-staffed public schools in the area council to deliver quality education.
While asserting that the NUT will resist and defend the rights of its members everywhere, Knabayi said the Kuje administration has been known to maltreat teachers for no just cause.
He affirmed that laid down procedures of sacking civil servants were not followed in the disengagement of the 1030 teachers, stating that a teacher can only be sacked when found culpable of an offense after due investigation.
"We are presently on strike because of the sacking of about 1000 teachers in Kuje area council of the FCT who were duly recruited in 2018 far before Sabo became the Chairman of Kuje Area Council.
“We are not saying that if anything is wrong, you should not correct it but, you should not stay in your office alone and generate issues that are not known to the leaders of the teachers.
“We are always ready to meet with the chairman on several occasions to resolve issues. We have to understand the issue together and work together, but in this case, the chairman is not always available in any of our meetings,” Comrade Knabayi further stated.
He declared that leadership is all about solving problems, adding “leadership and governance are processes that are continuous. Politicians should know that they are in office to correct the wrongs they met and not to create new problems, because one cannot be solving problems and at the same time creating new problems. This is what we do not understand in this case and the union is saying that we will not take it.”
Knabayi decried the fact that training and re-training of teachers have never taken place in Kuje Area Council under the present administration and he wondered why the Kuje chairman went ahead to confirm the affected teachers sometime last year when he knew there are abnormalities in the employment only to sack them in January this year.
“It is surprising that after screening and confirming the teachers, who have been on the pay roll for years before now and they have been working assiduously, you woke up one day to say they should be dismissed. We don't do that in the civil service; probably because you are a politician, but we are civil servants. We don't do that because we know very its implications."
Knabayi noted that this is a failure to see the importance of teachers and importance of education, which is the bedrock for development. "We believe that what was done in Kuje was a wrong decision and our demand is that the 1000 teachers disengaged by Suleiman Sabo administration must be returned to office, if there is anything that is noticed to be wrong, let us discuss it,” the NUT chairman declared.
On the elongation of teachers’ years of service as approved by the National Assembly and signed into law by the President, the NUT chairman pointed out that only Kuje, out of six area councils, has not implemented the decision stating that it was surprising especially as the matter has already been gazetted and are being implemented everywhere.
He called on Kuje Area Council Chairman personally attend meetings to resolve the lingering issues explaining that there are some functions that the chairman cannot delegate to lower personnel “because when the chairman is sending his private secretary to represent him in our meetings, we feel insulted since the private secretary is not a signatory to any documents in the council.
“In the documents, we are looking at, there is a provision that the directors of administration need to sign, and he is still in the office, the council treasurer is still in the office. So, why are you bringing a private secretary to represent you in vital discussions with the union,” he lamented.
Metro