Niger state governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani-Bello, following his familiar compassionate steps, has done the unusual again, this time for the primary school teachers, who have consistently and for years been expressing preference and agitating for being put under the control and management of State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), rather than that of the Local Governments.
The governor’s directive has ended for the teachers years and ages of suffering under a system which effectively sentenced our teachers to needless suffering and gnashing of teeth, as they remained unpaid weeks after other categories of workers in the state had taken their salaries.
Their worries and consequent pleas were well founded. It is the routine for the teachers to endure another two or three weeks, depending on the preference and grace of the local government headship, before receiving their monthly wages, a situation against which they fought, with memos, speeches at meetings, and lately even with open display of anger.
Their agitation, has now ended with the directive of the governor that they must now be located under SUBEB to ease the task of their administration, especially payment of their salaries and allowances, and for other routine needs.
Governor Sani-Bello has equally approved immediate promotion of all teachers who had been due for such, but had been denied for upwards of 5, even ten years. The directive which is to be given immediate execution is that all teachers who have been due for promotion must be promoted with immediately.
The governor, to ensure that the age of denying teachers their dues, particularly their well and genuinely deserved and timely elevation, has now made it mandatory that no teacher must again be made to wait for his/her promotion again.
Henceforth, no teacher in Niger state would have to await their dues weeks after their counterparts in other services had taken their own. No teacher would again have to go to the mountains or embark of prayerful vigils to get their promotions as and when such are due. Finally, all arrears of promotion for teachers must be given them, a directive which is already law that must be executed in a maximum of weeks.
It is indeed a new age of compassion and people-focused governance in Niger state. It is also a regime of extreme sensitivity to the plight of the common people, whose plight and concerns had hitherto won only a second place in earlier times. Kudos again to Abubakar Sani-Bello
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