Save The Child: Edo Primary School Teachers’ Strike Halts School Reopening

Edo state’s public primary school teachers, led by the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), on Monday flouted the Edo State Government’s directive to resume academic activities.

On January 18 2021, the primary school teachers had embarked on an indefinite strike to protest against the Edon state government’s non-implementation of the state NUT’s 10-point demands.

The teachers have remained on strike despite a ‘No Work, No Pay’ threat to teachers if they failed to resume had been issued to them by the state, according to a statement issued by Secretary to the State Government, Osarodion Ogie, on Thursday, January 28.

In fact, the NUT has restated its commitment to keep pushing for its demands to be met and advised parents to keep their children and wards away from public primary schools while the strike continued.

Speaking with newsmen, the Assistant Secretary-General of NUT, Edo State, Moni Mike Modesty Itua, described the strike as a total across the 18 council areas.

As things stand, the state government has deployed some staff members of local government education authority and State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to teach in public primary schools. So far, these classes have been having few pupils in attendance.

With Edo being one of our primary intervention states at Teens Going for Gold Network, it is a big burden on our hearts to see Edo state pupils resume their classroom learning activities.

As the saying goes, when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. We therefore laud the state government’s act of employing the services of SUBEB staff to engage the pupils in the meantime, and call on stakeholders, to kindly do all they can to achieve a resolution of the strike for the sake of the pupils who are the most critical sufferers in this case. They are the ones whose educational development hangs in the balance while this strike lingers.