Posted by From JACOB EDI, Abuja on
The governors Wednesday rose from an emergency meeting under the aegis of Nigeria Governors Forum and agreed to adopt the recommendation of its technical committee, which recommends that teachers should be paid the 27.5% of the prevailing basic salaries in each state of the federation.
The governors Wednesday rose from an emergency meeting under the aegis of Nigeria Governors Forum and agreed to adopt the recommendation of its technical committee, which recommends that teachers should be paid the 27.5% of the prevailing basic salaries in each state of the federation.
But individual states are expected to implement the salary increase depending on peculiar situation in the states.
The teachers had last week agreed to go back to their classrooms pending the outcome of the technical committee set up by the governors forum to harmonize the teachers agitation which led to its nation-wide strike.
At the time of this report, another meeting has been scheduled to hold at 10pm between the representative of the teachers and the governors forum in Abuja.
The technical committee of the governors forum headed by Namadi Sambo, Kaduna State governor, however, recommended that the implementation of the committee's report will depend on the fiscal capacity of respective states since their Internally Generated Revenue [IGR] are not uniform.
'As regards implementation time, with due consideration for the budgeting system and fiscal responsibility, where it is possible for a state to accommodate the implementation within the supplementary budget, such state should do so as practicable. Otherwise, implementation should be effected not later than January 2009,' the statement further suggested.
The communiqué, jointly signed by Governor Bukola Saraki, chairman of the governors forum and Governor Sambo, chairman of the technical committee, noted that 'the principle of federalism pre-supposes that the forum or the Federal Government for that matter cannot determine and enforce a uniform salary for teachers in the various states. States are the appropriate avenues for permanent resolution of this matter.'
But the communiqué said the Teacher-specific allowances was noted by the technical committee 'the teaching inducement allowance is to be implemented for professional teachers only.'
There was no response from the leadership of the NUT at press time but sources said the teachers are disposed towards attending the 10pm meeting and will brief its national executive council [NEC] to decide whether to call off the strike completely or not.