The International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) reported on Tuesday, October 26, 2021, confirming that Governor Babagana Umara Zulum was the first to publicly lament that some teachers at the Local Education Authority (LEA) levels were still receiving less than N11,000, while their counterparts working at the State levels were being paid based on N30,000 minimum wage, 10 months earlier.
In response to several screenshots uploaded on social media platforms that showed credit alerts of some LEA teachers' wages from an LGA, with less than N10,000 as salaries, the governor's spokesman, Malam Isa Gusau, provided the above justification.
The spokesman recalled that Governor Zulum had while addressing the reconstituted Borno State Universal Basic Education Board, under a new Chairman, Prof. Bulama Kagu, at the Government House, Maiduguri, on October 26, 2021, said the following:
“It is pathetic that there are teachers who are still collecting between N13,000 and N11,000 and even less. Despite economic challenges, we must work to ensure that every qualified teacher in Borno State earns a minimum of N30,000, which is the national minimum wage” Zulum lamented.
Gusau recalled that Zulum himself admitted that whereas the minimum wage was already implemented for all workers at the State Government levels including teachers, the implementation at the LEA could only be done after the system was sanitized just as it was done for State workers, Gusau recalled.
To prepare LEA teachers for national minimum wage, Governor Zulum had constituted a committee to conduct basic literacy and numeracy tests as well as competency assessment on all 17,229 LEA Local teachers across Borno’s 27 Local Government Areas.
On February 17, 2022, the State’s Commissioner of Education, Engr. Lawan Abba Wakilbe, a highly experienced, competent and hard working educationist, who chaired the Committee, presented what Zulum later described as a scary report.
The committee found that out of 17,229 existing LEA teachers, a total of 11,790 representing 69% of the entire LEA teachers, were found unqualified to teach.
2,389 of the LEA teachers had no academic qualification whatsoever, not even secondary school certificates.
In fact, 3,815 of the LEA teachers were found to be untrainable.
Only 5,439 teachers (31.6%) were good enough to teach, out of the 17,229 teachers assessed by the Committee.
With that report, Governor Zulum had the option of sacking the 11,790 unqualified teachers and could have used the monies being used as their salaries to implement the national minimum wage for the 5,439 qualified teachers.
However, Zulum announced that none of the 11,790 unqualified teachers were going to be sacked. He took that compassionate decision to avoid increasing unemployment in Borno State.
Instead, Government identified a number of them that could be trained while others were to be assigned to work in sectors that could include planting of trees at the Ministry of Environment.
With the Committee’s report, Governor Zulum directed that the minimum wage should immediately be applied for the 5,439 teachers found to be qualified to teach, pending decisions on the 11,790 unqualified teachers.
Borno State’s Commissioner for Education, Engr. Wakilbe recently led officials of his Ministry to a meeting with the State’s Ministry of Local Government and Emirate Affairs, at which national minimum wage was agreed to be applied for the 5,439 qualified teachers in-line with Governor Zulum’s directive, Gusau further explained.