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The Illegality Of National Teachers Strike In A Federal System By Ibrahim Dan-Halilu
For the first time in Nigeria’s history teachers in public schools have embarked on a nationwide strike to protest the non-implementation of the harmonized Teachers Salary Scale (TSS).
Before the nationwide strike which commenced last week, the teacher’s umbrella body, the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) embarked on a one-week warning strike to compel the Federal Government to implement the circular on the new salary structure.
In a swift move, the Federal Government invited the NUT for dialogue which ended in a deadlock as the union rejected the government’s offer of implementing the new salary structure only for teachers on its payroll.
The Federal Government delegation led by the Minister of Education Chief Aja Nwachukwu advised those teachers serving under state and local governments to negotiate with their respective employers since the Federal Government has no constitutional powers to force the other tiers of government to pay the harmonized wages.
But the teachers vehemently rejected this offer insisting that the Federal Government must direct the state and local governments to pay the new wages for teachers in their employment. This brought the negotiations to a standstill culminating in the ongoing nationwide strike.
While this dispute lasted, the fate of teachers in private schools was not defined but it became very clear that such category of teachers did not join the strike. Neither did their members join the initial discussion on the new wages.
Having realized that teachers in private school were not participating in the strike, the teachers union last week threatened to mobilize them to join the strike, which from all indications did not succeed. The union is making frantic moves to seek the support of the Nigeria Labour Congress to embark on picketing in private schools to ensure that the entire school system is grounded to a stand still.
While both sides could be blamed for the protracted dispute over harmonized wages, one could lay much of it at the door-steps of the last administration which entered into negotiation on the new wages without due consultation with state governments which have the largest chunk of school that engage those teachers.
The Federal Government has failed to realized that we are no longer under the military dictatorship that could issue directives to state governors to pay the new wages. The states have enormous powers under the constitution to reject or accept the proposal much so as they are not part of the initial decision to implement the policy.
In trying to address the error of commission of the last administration, the ‘Yar Adua government seems to have thrown away the baby with the bathe water. It is entirely wrong for the Federal Government to abandon the teachers working for state governments to their fate while it is a well known fact that its predecessor was responsible for the mess.
Instead of asking the teachers to negotiate with their employing states, the Federal Government should have initiated a meeting of all state governors and their Commissioners of Education as well as other stake holders to discuss the issue and come up with a concrete plan of addressing the problem. Doing the contrary will only put our educational sector in a dangerous state bearing in mind that primary and secondary schools are the foundation.
It is indeed illogical for teachers in the state and local government to expect the same wage structure with those working under the federal government in view of the disparity of the revenue and degree of responsibilities of the two tiers. The Federal Government takes the lion share of the oil revenue; it has fewer schools and fewer teachers in its employment.
The entire agitation for harmonized salary structure for teachers emanated from the erroneous belief that all professionals in Nigeria are rated higher than other working class. This is why we have a special wage for judges and other legal practitioners, medical doctors, architects, quantity surveyors. The nurses in public hospitals also pushed for similar treatment two years ago.
The Federal and State Governments erroneously acceded to this demand and implemented a new wage structure for medical personnel which emboldened the teachers to agitate for similar treatment. I am not saying they are not qualified to be called professionals like their colleagues in the health and judicial sectors. What I am emphasizing here is that the entire proposal is faulty and based on warped categorization.
Much as the position of the federal government in this matter could be faulted on some grounds, the truth is that harmonized salary structure for secondary school teachers is neither realizable not desirable. The Federal Government with its mighty purse can afford to pay a special package for its teachers because it has few secondary schools. But the states which would carry much of the burden do not have the needed funds to settle such huge wage bill that the teachers are demanding.
Looking at it from a legal angle, the government has a strong case in holding on to its position because its predecessor has faced serious resistance from state and local governments when the Obasanjo administration attempted to introduced the first charge deduction from the statutory allocation of local governments to offset wages of primary school teachers.
The National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) sued the federal government, seeking a stay action order from courts, which the NULGE finally won. Though the federal government did not comply with the ruling, it gave a warning signal that other tiers of government would go any length to enforce their financial independence.
Besides the illegality of the NUT demand, there is the question of reality as against wishful thinking. It is a well-known fact that most of the so-called private schools are not making ends meet in meeting their responsibility of providing standard learning facilities. They barely pay wages of their teachers and other support staff. For most of them, increase in school fees has been an annual ritual in order to meet their obligations.
Besides, many of them employ unqualified uncertified teachers in order to cut cost. Asking them to pay such teachers the new wages that are meant for qualified and registered teachers is akin to demanding the impossible. It is pertinent to note that even in public schools, many of the teachers are not qualified to teach.
If the NUT is genuinely interested in improving the teaching profession and educational standard as a whole, the first measure to take is to rid all schools of unqualified teachers. After this, they should ensure that all professionally qualified teachers are registered with the Teachers Registration Council (TRC). When these two conditions are met, then the issue of harmonized salary for teachers can resurface because no amount of wage increase can raise standards as long as learning tools are not provided to both teachers and students.
The teacher should take a cue from their counterparts in universities and polytechnics where their salary had been increased three fold but the standard of our degrees is still relatively low because the lecturers are not utilizing the various allowances introduced in their wages for the purposes they were meant. Take the research allowance for instance, how many lecturers do such researches and publish them in international journals?
Even at this, the NUT should realize that no professionals in Nigeria have a harmonized salary structure. The judges, lawyers, journalists, accountants, medical doctors and nurses are not earning a harmonized salary all over the country. Each state is paying according to its ability. What the teachers should fight for is a minimum wage for teachers, not a harmonized structure.
It is probable that the teachers demand arises from the erroneous belief that university lecturers have a harmonized salary. What the NUT should try to find out is whether all university lecturers in the country earn the same wages. The federal universities and colleges of education earn higher than their colleagues in state-owned institutions.
My feeling is that the distortion and contradiction arouse from the existence of the National Wages Commission (NWC), which should be scrapped to allow civil service commissions to determine employee wages at local, state and federal government levels. The NWC should not be in existence when we talk of a federal structure unless we want to engender crises as we have seen in the case of teachers versus the federal government.
The whole idea of a national union of teachers as a pressure group is also utopian. It should not be in existence in the first place under a democratic government that operates a federal constitution. The union should be disbanded to allow teachers in every state to form their own union that should agitate for good welfare and service delivery of its members on the basis of peculiarities of each state.
The federal and state governments on their part should introduce some far reaching reforms in the educations sector whereby teachers will be rated by both parents and students. Their promotion or otherwise should be based on the ratings they receive. The schools should also be rated annually to determine which ones are in the first, second and third category and fees should be charged on these bases.
It is my conviction that if parent-student rating is introduced in the school system and the schools are rated on their performance, the standard will not only improved but also that teachers will be more committed to their work such that they would not need to go on strike before their genuine demands are met. They may not have to do the fight themselves; parents and students will do it for them.
The various state and local government should publicize the requirements for establishing private schools so that parents could always use the indices to rate schools before enrolling their children. The Ministry of Education of every state should ensure that private schools comply with the minimum standard before they are given operation licenses.
My thinking is that the issue of harmonized teachers’ salary was brought to the front burners because the current President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Abdulwahid Umar, is from the union. His emergence has led to renewed calls for harmonized salary structure for teachers which he wanted to use as his major achievement in office.
But it is certainly a wrong move, the idea both utopian and impossible unless we want to starve other tiers of government and deny them the fund they need to carry out important projects for the people. The Nigerian teachers are less than 2 per cent of the population. It is unjustifiable for them to claim 70 per cent of state and local government income.
My appeal to NUT is that it should call off the strike and ask its members in states to open negotiations with the various state governments on teachers’ minimum wage. Those in private schools should do the same. The private schools should be compelled to establish Teachers Consultative Council since unionism may not be allowed.
We should not allow the current wages crises to cripple our educational system and keep our children in perpetual home schooling due to recalcitrant and selfish attitude of our leaders very few of whom have their children in public schools. The Federal Government should initiate the dialogue between the teachers and the states.
I also called on the National Assembly to review the NWC Act with a view to either expunging it from the constitution or amending its provisions to empower each state to have a wages commission. I appeal to the executive and the legislature not to take this matter lightly because the denial of schooling to teeming children of the poor which the teachers strike translates into, could lead to a spontaneous reaction of both the children and their parents.
We should not forget that already the flames of hatred had been lit by the hypocritical but obscure segregation of schools between the children of the rich and those of the poor. We should not allow the current crises to lead to the anti-climax of this burning hatred.
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