By Doosuur Iwambe
For about eight months now, teachers in Benue state have been in a running battle with the Benue state government over unpaid salaries and inability of the government to pay the agreed federal government minimum salary scale.
Precisely on October 4, 2013 the teachers embarked on industrial action to demand that the government honors its agreement to pay them a minimum wage of N18, 000.
Since then, the teachers have not collected salaries, just as pupils have been at home and the school building and premises overgrown with weed.
The teachers are passing through diverse hardship and most of them whose children are in the tertiary
Institutions have not been able to cater for their educational demands. This is even as many are dying of hunger and extreme poverty.
In an era where governments all over the world are making frantic efforts to make education available for all; particularly, basic education, the story however, seems to appear differently in Benue State. This is why; it may not be an exaggeration to submit that the Benue State government might just be breeding ready tools for desperate politicians to engage as political thugs in 2015. No doubt the eight-month old strike action by primary school teachers in Benue State is an ill wind that is doing nobody any good. As a matter of fact, the face-off between the government and the teachers is doing great damage to the future of education not just in the state, but Nigeria at large.
Our leaders have suddenly forgotten the promises they made during electioneering and their responsibilities to the citizens. It is inexcusable for a government to shut down primary schools for about eight months over disputes with teachers and we are all carrying on as if all is well with our state. This is a clear demonstration of arrogance, and outright insensitivity to the plight of our children and wards
that have been at the receiving end of this show of strength by the government. You will recall that the initiative of the minimum wage for civil servants was a federal government agenda that was designed with the aim to improve on the lives of the employed personnel under it, and directed all the states in the country to implement the wage while virtually all the states in the country have since implemented the minimum wage, Benue State which had in 2011, implemented that of all civil servants including staff of state and local governments then, has refused to effect the payment for the primary school teachers.
Nothing works in Nigeria, as they should, and there are no interventions focused on the problems facing the society. Those in elective and appointed positions plunder the public treasury and hide the money abroad. Of what values are these groups to the society? Nigeria needs men and women of great character as leaders to move forward. As William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) noted that “the great distinction of a country is that it produces superior men and women” to administer its affairs. Therefore, there is no hope for Nigerian resurgence with the present crop of selfish, greedy, corrupt, and visionless political leaders, because “the great hope of a society is individual character”. If each one of them could be courageous enough to search their conscience and reflect on the pertinent issues, they would create a society that is truly beneficial to everyone.
The problem we have in Nigeria is that our leaders, with their insatiable greed, have a very wrong conception of the duties and responsibilities of a leader. Their lack of social consciousness is troubling, to say the least. This provides inappropriate model for emulation; and it has ultimately destroyed the moral fabric of our society. For our leaders, to be a leader means sure access to the nation’s central bank. For them to be a leader means to build and acquire million-dollar mansions at choice areas. For them to be a leader means to own fleets of cars, or personal jet. For them to be leader means destroying the society, and pauperizing the entire population. This explains why a leader like governor Suswam will pay a deaf ear to the plight of children who are the leaders of tomorrow. Nigeria will be good only if the managers of our public purse are people of virtue.
Leadership failure and bankrupcy of leadership are key reasons for the successive failure of the state to meet the dreams and aspiration of the founding fathers. Political leaders are not God-fearing; they do not respect the dominant value of respect for the names of their family, they do not respect the law of the land and do not believe in human rights of other people.
The law does not rule here in Nigeria, hence the people are not equal before the law. Human rights are not respected, legislators do not carry out their legislative duties diligently; the executive is not faithfully and selflessly over sighted, the people are not patriotically represented and the laws being made by the legislators are truly not impactful on the lives of the masses. In all these, the programmes of government have failed to meet the genuine desire of the people.
