Oga Wike, listen to FCT teachers

If there’s any set of basic school teachers in the country that have suffered much frustration and mistreatment in the pursuit of their fundamental labour rights in recent years, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) teachers are second to none. On a comparative national scale, they appear to have gone on strike more on others in the struggle for their entitlements. Hardly a quarter of a year would pass without the teachers being compelled to shut down schools due to the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) reneging on its promises.

Recently, teachers in the FCT on Monday June 6, 2026 disrupted the 2025 promotion examination for civil servants organised by the FCTA to protest the non-promotion of teachers allegedly due since 2023 and 2024. The promotion examination, scheduled to hold at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) along the Kubwa Expressway, Abuja, could not commence as planned after hundreds of protesting teachers barricaded the entrance to the examination venue. The protesters, drawn from the six area councils of the FCT, were led by the chairman of the FCT wing of the NUT, Comrade Abdullahi Mohammed Shafas, and the union’s General Secretary, Comrade Margareth F. Jethro.

The protesting teachers carried placards and chanted solidarity songs while demanding the promotion of teachers who, they said, had remained stagnated despite passing previous promotion examinations. The chairman of the FCT Civil Service Commission, Emeka Ezeh, who arrived at the venue around 8:12am, was prevented from addressing candidates waiting to write the examination after the protesters blocked access to the lecture hall.

Addressing journalists, Shafas said the union decided to disrupt the promotion exercise because the Commission had allegedly failed to promote teachers who were due in 2023 and 2024. He argued that there was no justification for conducting the 2025 promotion examination for other civil servants in the FCT while teachers who had already passed previous promotion examinations in 2023 and 2024 remained stagnated. “It is unacceptable that teachers who sacrificed to work in rural communities amid insecurity are denied promotion after meeting all the requirements,” Shafas said. He also criticised the adoption of ‘vacancy’ as a requirement for teachers’ promotions; noting that many teachers work under difficult conditions, particularly in rural areas affected by banditry and kidnapping; yet with poor remuneration.

Also speaking, the union’s General Secretary, Margareth Jethro, said the NUT had repeatedly engaged the FCT Civil Service Commission over its promotion guidelines, particularly the provision that makes teachers’ promotion subject to available vacancies. She argued that teachers should be exempted from the vacancy requirement because they are not pool staff like other civil servants.

Responding, the chairman of the FCT Civil Service Commission, Emeka Ezeh, said the Commission could not deviate from the existing civil service promotion guidelines. He maintained that the Commission was bound by the rules governing promotions and lacked the authority to alter them.

Strike actions by the FCT teachers have been a recurrent decimal since 2021; most of which were often informed by government not fulfilling its own part of the agreement with the NUT. The refusal, for instance, by the six Area Councils of the FCT to honour the agreement reached with the FCT teachers’ union compelled the FCT teachers to embark on a 5-day warning strike on November 8, 2021. They, however, proceeded on an indefinite strike at the expiration of the warning strike as no response to their demands came from the area councils that consistently failed to settle teachers’ entitlements. The strike was later suspended on December 1, 2021 with an understanding by both parties to meet on December 13, 2021; a meeting the area council chairmen shunned. Even the meetings fixed for January 13, 2022 and January 21, 2022 both failed as the area council chairmen refused to turn up.

It would be recalled that teachers in FCT public schools resumed their suspended strike on Wednesday January 26, 2022 over their owed allowances. The teachers are demanding, among others, for the payment of their promotion arrears from 2015, backlogs of annual increment, and 25 months arrears of the national minimum wage. Similarly, the same FCT teachers commenced an indefinite strike action on Monday, January 15, 2024 to protest, among other demands, the failure by the area council chairmen to pay arears of 25 months new national minimum wage owed them and the non-implementation of 40 percent peculiar allowance due to them. Again, the teachers on September 11, 2023 embarked on an indefinite strike, which following the intervention of the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, suspended it on October 2, 2023 for six weeks; to allow for the resolution of the issues at stake.

Oga Wike, it is important to note that the incessant strikes by the FCT teachers have their negative consequences on the pupils in the FCT public schools. For example, this group of primary school pupils in the FCT that spend more time at home than they attend school is expected to learn from the same curriculum contents and write the same terminal examinations with their counterparts in private schools within the FCT as well as other public primary schools in states where teachers seldom go on strikes. Besides, the FCTA under ‘Mr Project’ cannot afford to joke with the welfare of those saddled with the responsibility of giving basic intellectual and moral training to young citizens who are potential future leaders of the country. Moreover, education, as you know, is basic right of the Nigerian child.

The poor treatment of teachers that has seemingly become a norm at various levels of government puts the future of the country and of the next generation of  Nigerian leaders at stake. Thus, the narrative about teachers being owed their legitimate entitlements for years has to change. Teachers educate and mentor children and young people, helping to develop the knowledge, skills, and values needed for national development. Oga Wike, listen to the FCT teachers to save their soul. They are not asking for anything outside of the entitlements owed them. Not just the financial entitlements owed the teachers; even their promotion, like other public servants, is a right. Like accountants, auditors, bankers, judges, and the military, teachers do not deserve to be owed. May Allah touch the heart of FCT authorities to pay every entitlement being owed FCT teachers, Amin.

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