… as court restrain them from embarking on strike
The Enugu State Chapter of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), has called on the state governor, Mr Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi to pay the primary school teachers the N30,000 new national Minimum wage and other consequential adjustment.
State chairman of NUT, Mr Theophilus Odo, made the call on Friday, while reacting to an interlocutory injunction restraining the teachers from embarking on any strike to demand for the payment of the minimum wage by the National Industrial Court sitting in Enugu.
Justice Oluwakayode Arowosegbe of Court II, had while ruling on Exparte application brought by the State Government to stop the teachers from embarking on any strike action to demand for the payment of the new minimum wage, held that the teachers (defendant/ respondents) were essential workers and embarking on any form of strike would going to impact negatively on the poor primary school children in the state.
In suit No: NICN/EN/01/2022, between Enugu State Government (Claimant) VS Theophilus Odo and another for themselves and on behalf of the teachers in Enugu State (defendants), the court ruled thus:
“… I hereby grant interlocutory injunction restraining the defendant/respondents from going on any strike or industrial action pending the determination of the substantive suit.
“I’m more particularly granting this application in view of the fact that the main suit is originating summon which does not require mending procedure to get sorted out. I grant this application subject with the condition that the suit be giving accelerated hearing and I give warning that any
subservient or any story or delay on the part of the Claimant will lead to the vacation of the interlocutory injunction.
“The defendant/respondents are giving seven days from today to file and serve the counter affidavit to the main suit, this means their time will expire on Friday 11 February 2022. The Claimant/Applicant is giving five days thereafter to file and serve their further and better affidavit if any, which means this terminate on Wednesday 15, February 2022. Case is adjourned to February 22, 2022 for definite hearing.”
But reacting to the ruling of the court, the NUT chairman described the action of the state government as very unfortunate and discriminatory.
According to him, “the state government has sued the teachers asking the court to restrain them from going on strike claiming that they are on essential service. But I want to say that if the teachers are on essential service they should pay them essential salary.”
“We have had series of meetings with the local government chairmen, with Joint Action Committee (JAC), with the Commissioners even the governor and they have been making promise for the past two years. So we find out that they are not forthcoming, after sometime they set up a technical Committee that sat for almost nine months and they have turned in their report; later they said that local government employees should go for biometric data capturing for two months which has been accomplished on December.
“So, they now came up again this January and said that they should now also be paid with the old salary scale. That is why we came up and said we should go for three days warning strike which has been completed.”
He added, “it is very unfortunate that this government should be discriminating against the primary school teachers who taught them. It is very unfortunate and what the government is doing now is demoralizing the teachers. Whether we like it or not is affecting the whole educational system in the state.
“When the teacher is not happy, when the teacher doesn’t eat while coming to school and not even sure whether he will eat while he goes home, he will not be happy to teach in the classroom.
“I want to appeal to the state government to do something to remedy this situation. They have sue NUT to court without any reason because they are asking for their rights. You can’t beat a child and ask a child not to cry. It is the greatest injustice. They are just crying because they are hungry.”
He regretted that the teachers have been negotiating with the state government for the past two on how to pay them the N30,000 new minimum wage but to no avail.
