Date Published: 09/30/09
September 29, 2009 Press Release
TEACHERS STRIKE: DPA ACCUSES LAGOS OF IMPUNITY AND LACK OF POLITICAL WILL
The Democratic Peoples’ Alliance (DPA) wants the Lagos State Government and the local branch of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) to call a truce and immediately reopen schools for children’s sake.
Charging the government with impunity, especially as it recently told teachers to forget the implementation until next year, Lagos DPA said in a statement by its Director of Publicity, Felix Oboagwina: “The current crisis is unwarranted, inexcusable and immoral in a state that earns N14 billion every month as Internally Generated Revenue, from which it illegitimately pays a private tax firm N2.1 billion every month.”
The party said the crisis simply meant the government lacked the political will to fulfill earlier promises made on the 27.5 percent increase in the Teachers’ Salary Structure (TSS).
“How far has Lagos gone with meeting the UN recommendation to devote 26 percent of budget to education?” DPA queried. “How far has Lagos gone to tackle recurring negative decimals in the public schooling system? How far has Lagos dealt with its schools’ dilapidated buildings, classes overcrowded with as many as 120 pupils as opposed to the 25 recommended by the United Nations? How far has Lagos tackled the problems of incessant strikes, inadequate teachers, unchecked levies and low teacher morale? What is Lagos doing about lack of library and laboratory facilities and dearth of scholarships, bursaries and foreign training? Let them tell us.”
Noting that poorer states like Kwara, Bayelsa and Kaduna had since implemented the TSS, DPA said the current face-off underscored the Deputy Governor, Princess Sarah Sosan’s incompetence as Commissioner for Education.
“The government has so estranged itself from the citizens that in a truly democratic setting, it deserves to lose the next elections hands down,” the party statement said.
For the fact that teachers had called off previous strikes because government asked for time to pay, the party accused the state of displaying bad faith and impunity in the entire episode. It said the same attitude had surfaced during the authorities’ recent problem with employees of the Lagos State University (LASU) until all the home unions marshaled a corporate front.
In the words of DPA: “Lagos is telling workers that it will bend only to force, not dialogue or reason when it comes to labour issues. And this is rather unfortunate.”
According to the party, the incessant hiccups in the educational sector could psychologically impair the children, to make them develop a lackadaisical attitude to didactic learning and formal education.
Urging the state to quickly follow in the footsteps of other states that had implemented the TSS, the party further warned that the teachers strike would further stall the development of the state’s educational sector.
Furthermore, the party challenged the government to tell the world what impact it had so far made on education, other than the tokenism of paying secondary students’ external terminal exams.
The party noted: “This government has few friends and it doesn’t seem to care. It has fought almost everybody –doctors, teachers, lecturers, non-academic staff of universities, okada operators, landlords, tenants, businessmen, traders, corporate bodies, etc. – and for no good reason.”
According to the party, the government must change its tactics of bringing grandstanding, strong-arm tactics and the big stick to the table, when a small dose of diplomatic dialogue would have easily rectified labour issues.
FELIX OBOAGWINA
Director of Publicity, Lagos DPA
08033327355.
