The chairman of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT wing of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Abdullahi Mohammed Shafas, has warned that due to the ongoing strike worsened by administrative neglect under Wike’s watch, there may be no new intake into Junior Secondary School (JSS) 1 in the FCT this year.
According to DailyTrust, Shafas gave the warning on Tuesday during a phone-in programme on the network service of Radio Nigeria, which was monitored by Abuja Metro.
The union leader warned that pupils in primary six in all the public schools in the territory may not to be admitted into JSS 1 in September due to what he called lukewarm attitude of the six area council chairmen, who he said have failed to address the demands of the striking teachers.

According to him, the council chairmen have continued to pay deaf ears to the demands of the teachers, saying three different agreements were reached with the council chairmen and were all reneged
He said, “You see, due to the lukewarm attitude of our council chairmen, they failed to see it as a responsibility to pay these monies. They pay deaf ears to some of these issues. In the FCT, you cannot say because primary schools’ teachers are under the local government councils, they are not entitled to the benefits other civil servants in the FCT are enjoying.”
He queried, “Don’t we live in the same FCT? Are we not suffering the same fate? Am I not a teacher? Don’t I leave my community to come to the school? Don’t I fuel my car to come to the school?”
He said the union has a lot of pending demands that the council chairmen were yet to respond to, noting that the federal government’s new minimum wage was given to teachers in junior and senior secondary schools, civil servants and other government agencies but the primary school teachers were left out.
He said, “They left out those who are supposed to build the foundation of education. Now that we have been at home for over two months, both the teachers and children, who will fill the junior secondary schools? This is to say, this year, the junior secondary schools might not have new intakes. That is what it means if this strike does not end quickly for the teachers to go back to classes and make amendments so that the pupils in primary six can sit for the qualifying exams.”
He said in the next session, there is likely not going to be JSS 1, except only children from private schools and according to him, children of the poor masses in the rural communities will be left out.
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