The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) in Benue State has vowed to strike if the state government does not comply with its demands, which include having all outstanding consolidated enhanced allowances deducted from their paychecks in May and June 2023 and restoring promotions.
In a telephone chat with journalists in Makurdi on Tuesday, Levi Terna Akuma, the State Chairman of the NUT, emphasized that their promotions were done so legitimately by the previous administration.
After the union’s emergency State Executive Council meeting in Makurdi, Akuma issued a statement that was also signed by the acting secretary, Jeremiah Ochonu, urging Governor Hyacinth Alia to reinstate all teacher promotions that had been overturned and order the payment of their arrears within the allotted time.
Additionally, it criticized the removal of 2,500 alleged ghost workers from the payroll and ordered the state administration to make public the names of everyone who was struck off the payment vouchers for May and June 2023 in order to clarify the situation.
Also in the news; Bemgba Iortyom, the state’s PDP publicity secretary, has meantime urged the governor to heed the warning and undo whatever actions he had made that were detrimental to the state’s interests.
Through a circular letter that was domesticated, assented to, and gazetted by the Benue State Government among others, the union complained about the delay in the release of the circular on tenure elongation of primary school teachers (40 years of service and 65 years of chronological age), as specified in the Harmonized Retirement Age for Teachers in Nigeria, Act 2022.