In Ekiti State, teachers yesterday urged the incoming governor, Hon. Biodun Oyebanji, to protect their welfare since it is still the greatest method to prevent industrial conflict while he is in office.
Teachers praised Dr Kayode Fayemi, the outgoing governor, for starting ground-breaking programmes that had a beneficial impact on the education sector, saying it was still the most booming business and needed to be supported with all available resources.
This was when Fayemi donated two automobiles and cash gifts to the best and outstanding teachers at both public primary and secondary schools in the state to urge them to give their best to the service of the state.
The teachers stated this in Ado Ekiti during a programme to commemorate the 2022 World’s Teachers’ Day.
The teachers under the auspices of the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools (ASUSS), and the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) pledged their support to the incoming administration but restated that their welfare must not be compromised in order to smoothen the relationship when coming on board.
The ASUSS Chairman, Sola Adigun, who spoke extensively on behalf of the teachers, said the teachers were still optimistic that some of their pending benefits would be paid within the next 10 days before Fayemi will bow out of office.
He said: “We have so many unpaid benefits. Our salary, promotion, pension and gratuity arrears of retirees are there. We have that belief that Governor Fayemi can still do the magic and pay it off before leaving on October 16.
“Though we appreciate the fact that the state economy was not that buoyant, you can still make the teachers happy before you go, while your successor will begin where you stopped.”
Addressing the teachers, Fayemi said due to the quality of their teachings, the school enrolment had exponentially increased from 191,117 in 2018 to 261,292 in 2022.
Fayemi added that the increase in enrolment automatically resulted in the need to establish additional 10 secondary schools in 2021, while the government paid a sum of N6 billion counterpart funds to match UBEC’s contribution to executing 886 projects.
“As I speak now, under two World Bank-assisted programmes, AGILE and IDEAS, renovation of structures/provision of furniture and equipment in 202 schools and upgrading of facilities in three technical colleges are ongoing. Moreover, 1,558 teachers were employed by SUBEB, TESCOM and BTVE within the past four years.
“So far, we have disbursed N655 million as running grants to public schools in Ekiti State. Similarly, we have paid a total of N1, 044,941,450 to enable 57,465 public school students to sit for the WAEC examination over the past four years,” he said.