Teachers Threaten To Go On Strike

The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT)
yesterday in Abuja threatened to embark on what it called "mother of all strikes" if the local government autonomy being proposed by the
National Assembly scales through.
It says if granted, local governments across the country cannot run primary schools because of their lack of capacity and the corruption in the system.
President of NUT Comrade Michael Alogba Olukoya, who stated this after a National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the union, argued that the move is not in the best interest of education in Nigeria.
Olukoya said: "Supposing the National Assembly goes ahead with this autonomy of local governments, we shall give a marching order to our members, the moment the
constitution is amended against the wish of the Nigerian teachers; we shall experience what I would call total altercation in academic
activities."

He explained that the abolition of state joint local government accounts would be a disaster insofar as implementation of education is concerned if nothing is done to
address the imminent effect of the abolition.
The NUT president recalled "the sad and near total collapse of primary education between 1990 and 1994 when it came under the control of the local governments."
He stated that the experience revealed that primary education was never in the priority list of the local government councils as virtually all
of them resorted to owing teachers salaries for upward of six to 12 months continuously.
He also pointed out that the move will deprive teachers of their pension because some teachers who retired between 1990 and 1994 are still suffering the effect of neglect by local government councils.