Leave us out of LG autonomy protest – NUT

By Abdullahi Muhammad

Teachers under the aegis of Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on Wednesday stormed the Secretariat of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) at Area 11, demanding to be left out of the planned local government autonomy.
Chairman, NUT FCT chapter, Comrade Knabayi Stephen, who addressed the protesting teachers at the main entrance of the Secretariat reiterated their decision to be left out of the local government autonomy, adding it was a common position of the NUT national executive council (NEC) taken at its meeting held on April 24, 2017, in Kaduna state.
He said: “This has become imperative as the Supreme Court of Nigeria in its 2002 judgment, in the case of AG Federation Vs AG of the 36 states held that the responsibility of providing and managing primary education in the country obviously lies with the state government.
“Against this background, the National Executive Council of the Nigeria Union of Teachers has re-directed all its state wings including that of the Federal Capital Territory to carry out a solidarity rally rejecting the so-called autonomy.
“Despite an increase in allocation to the local government councils from the Federation Account by five per cent to enable the Councils play their participatory role in assisting the state governments to pay salaries of primary school teachers, the teachers were denied salaries for several months, in some cases for over 12 months.”
He, however, said the NUT was “not totally against local government autonomy if that is what Nigerians believe would bring development to all nooks and crannies of the country,’ adding that the “Union is concerned about the likelihood of scrapping the state Joint Local Government Account which would mean taking primary education back to the dark pre-1994 era.”
He commended the FCT Administration under Malam Muhammad Musa Bello for giving priority attention to education and the many achievements the sector has recorded so far.
Also speaking, the Director, Office of the Permanent Secretary, Mr. Udoh Samuel Atang, who addressed the teachers on behalf of the Administration, commended them for a peaceful protest and promised to relay their demands to the appropriate quarters, expressing the hope that they would be positively looked into.

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