Life is becoming unbearable for public primary school teachers in Rivers state over alleged unpaid backlog of their wages for months, an allegation denied by state government. GODWIN EGBA writes.
An old cliché, ‘Teachers’ reward is in the heaven’ now holds sway in Rivers state as the state government is believed to be owing public primary school teachers months of accumulated arrears of salaries, allowances and promotions.
Blueprint checks revealed that the state government is on top of states in Nigeria whose primary school teachers are begging for their legitimate wages.
Others according to checkers by Blueprint revealed that Niger, Benue, Taraba, Imo, Kaduna and Ondo States also owe between six to almost 15 months from different stages for different categories of teachers, probably for reason unconnected with waiting for the federal government.
Except for government bureaucracy, it would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari approved a special salary scale for Nigerian teachers in commemoration of World Teachers Day on October 5, 2020, an announcement made by minister of education, Adamu Adamu.
Adamu read the speech as representative of Mr President, saying that the implementation of the new salary scheme is to encourage teachers in delivering better services and that the federal government had announced earlier that the approved salary scale was expected to take off take on January 1, 2022.
The announcement was disclosed in a post via the social media handle of the federal government back in May 2021.
The statement reads in part, “The new Special Teachers Salary scale approval by President Muhammed Buhari in 2020 is expected to take off on January 1, 2021.”
To assert their genuine plight and not foul cry, teachers of Demonstration Primary and Secondary Schools in Rivers State alongside the Rivers Civil Society Organisations recently staged a protest at the Nigeria Bar Association Conference Centre located inside the Yakubu Gowon Stadium in Port-Harcourt.
Some teachers who spoke with Blueprint attributed the protest to the attendance of the state governor, Nyesome Wike. They opined that the state government had ignored their plights despite a series of protests over their demand.
The teachers made passionate appeal to lawyers to prevail on the state government especially the governor to obey the Court of Appeal Judgment over their demand which they claimed was in their favour.
The chairman Rivers State Civil Society Organisation, Enefa Georgewill, who spoke on behalf of the protesters, questioned the state government‘s seeming refusal to pay the teachers’ salaries for about five years.
He said, “The office of Rivers state governor is a creation of law and if a court of competent jurisdiction has given an order for goodness sake, everybody must obey.
“You said that they are collecting school fees, therefore, they should pay themselves but the question is, are they the vice chancellor that controls the fund?
“We don’t have issue with the governor, but we are saying that he should do well to obey the subsisting court order and it’s not too much for the teachers to ask for,” Georgewill noted.
To dampen the hope of the aggrieved teachers, the council chairman of Ikwere local government area, Mr. Samual Nwanosike, who addressed the teachers in the absence of the state commissioner, described the teachers’ claims as a plot to tarnish the image of the state government in the presence of lawyers. He pointed out that, “Governor Nyesome Wike is on record to have paid the salaries of even teachers he did not employ”.
To a cross-section of public analysts who also spoke with Blueprint in the Garden City over the fate of teachers, they asked to know who is telling the truth between the teachers and state government
Even as many of these teachers who may not have other means of livelihood remain in lamentation over their possibility of losing their wages, they have worked under the current economic situation in the country.
Concerted effort made by Blueprint to get the reaction of the management of the Rivers State Primary School Board proved abortive as no authoritative officer could be reached as some said it is only the governor could address the issue.
