WOLE BALOGUN, Ado Ekiti

The Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools( ASUSS), has warned that delay in the implementation of the N30,000 new national minimum wage will automatically affect the morale of teachers.

They said implementing the minimum wage becomes expedient now as states across Nigeria commence another academic session.

Addressing newsmen in Ado-Ekiti on Friday, the National President of the Union, Mr Samuel Omaji, said improved wage, working tools and conducive teaching-learning environment, were fundamental impetuses that can make teachers give the best in the academic environment.

ASUSS also decried the poor infrastructure, inadequate public schools and lack of basic teaching aids, including modern laboratories in most of the secondary schools across the country.

“The foot-dragging of government on the minimum wage issue and poor attention to secondary schools generally appear to us, a calculated attempt to take education off the reach of the common man, as the private schools continue to soar in the face of lackadaisical government attitude to funding public schools.”

Omaji said the continued negotiations and breach of terms of new minimum wage after it had become law was seen by secondary schools teachers as a ploy by the Federal government to deliberately frustrate the implementation of the new wage.

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“Its inexplicable that after over two years of agitation by the labour movement, culminating in eventual negotiation and signing into law of the bill, the Federal government has continued to deploy various tactics, including divide and rule to negate the implementation of a basic surviving wage, notwithstanding that Nigeria workers have the right to a living wage and not a mere minimum wage.”

The ASUSS National President insisted that no government in Nigeria had justification to reject the agreed peanut of N30,000, which only amounted to N1,000 daily, whereas artisans in the country earn more than N3,000 daily, while government expend more wastefully every day.

He said: “They have no excuse under heaven as to their continued delay in the implementation. If it’s a question of insufficient fund, we have told them often that Federal and state chief executives should cut their wasteful spending, including the needless foreign trips that gulp millions of naira. They need to be more creative, block all loopholes, be more patriotic, purposeful and fiscally discipline.”

Omaji also called on the Federal government to unravel the mystery behind the P&ID saga and ensure that anyone fingered in the deal was publicly tried and brought to book, while it appealed to the TUC and NLC, being the mother unions of Nigeria labour movement to stand in the gap for Nigerian people on the matter.

“Imagine, how did we arrive at over $9billion litigation liability in the P&ID case if our leaders are indeed patriotic and honest?”

The ASUSS urged government to adhere strictly to its social contract with Nigerians as contained in Section 14, 2 of the 1999 constitution, which is fundamentally about the welfare and security of the people.