National President of Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Audu Titus Amba has claimed that in 20 years, a vast number of primary and secondary schools have not recruited teachers although increasing numbers are retiring.
He expressed fears that soon many Nigerian schools will be left without teachers.
He spoke in Calabar when he commissioned buses for the NUT Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society transport scheme.
“If you take statistics, you’ll see that a good number of schools in Nigeria have not recruited teachers for the past twenty years. That’s the situation we have found ourselves.
“It will interest you to know that a good number of state governments are not recruiting teachers to commensurate with the ones that are retiring.
“When teachers are retiring and there is no commensurate recruitment or replacement then the school system will be left without teachers in our school. ”
He posited that if the government cannot recruit then they should extend the service years of serving teachers.
Amba, however, commended the federal government for implementing and keeping to its promises for primary and secondary school teachers.
“We are proud as Nigerian teachers to identify with the leadership of this country. As far as we are concerned as Primary and Secondary School teachers, we’ve gotten what we want from the President of this country and those things are not only increments in the service year of teachers but there are many other goodies like the years of retirement for teachers from 60 to 65 years and from 35 years to 40 years for service, issue of special salary, special allowances, loans, scholarships that are enshrined in those very approvals that the president has graciously given to Nigerian teachers.
“So we’re most grateful to him. He has done his part. we are now waiting for the Gazette to be out so that it will now become a working document for all the tiers of governments.”
Amba charged other chapters of NUT to emulate Cross River State.
Chairman of NUT in the state, Gregory Olayi, in his remarks, lamented that teachers in Cross River are paid salaries once in two months.
He frowned at the ill-treatment meted on teachers in the state, stressing that the condition of teachers is most regrettable.
“As a union, we’ve been going through a lot of stress to attend one function or the other. We were opportuned to come together to form a Cooperative. I was motivated to say to them let us use this to purchase vehicles to move our members from one place to another so that the money we used in hiring vehicles will still come back to us and our members will not suffer much any further.