NUT opposes transfer of salaries to LGs
By Joshua Egbodo
Abuja
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, has assured teachers in public schools that the National Assembly would increase their retirement age from the current 60 to 65 years.
Dogara, who explained that the intention was to retain more experienced teachers in public schools, made the pledge when he received a delegation from the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) who paid him a courtesy visit in his office.
This was even as the leadership of the NUT has pleaded with the National Assembly not to support any move to transfer teachers’ salaries back to the local governments.
Addressing the delegation, he said: “We have done it for the tertiary institutions and the judiciary, so nothing should stop us from taking the bull by the horns. They say that wine gets better with age, it was the same consideration that motivated us to raise that of university lecturers, raise that of judges. So, this is something we can pursue.
“Thankfully, it doesn’t require constitutional amendment; it is something we can achieve by amending the existing law. That is the responsibility of the parliament and we assure you that we will do something about that so that the benefit that comes with experience and wisdom will not be lost.”
Earlier, National President of NUT, Comrade Michael Alogba Olukoya, appealed that the union preferred that in order to address the issue, “we want the responsibilities of paying the salaries of teachers be handed over to state governments, in which case the salaries component of the revenue allocation of the local governments will have to be transferred to the states and restructure the fiscal allocation of our national resources in favour of the states to guarantee uninterrupted and unfettered primary education in Nigeria.”
Additionally, the teachers’ union demanded that teachers’ salaries be paid from first-line charge from the federation account through the Universal Basic Education Commission.
“We teachers of Nigeria in primary and secondary schools do seek and demand that our retirement age be raised to 65 years to increase the teacher retention rate in our schools. This will help to check the rate at which experienced teachers are being lost in the school system whereas younger and prospective teachers are not recruited to take their place.”
