Teachers Stay away as Students Resume in Oyo

Ademola Babalola in Ibadan

Public school teachers currently on strike in line with the directive of the Oyo State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) yesterday defied the state government’s order to resume classroom work.

This was as most of the students in public primary, secondary and tertiary schools in the state resumed for academic work after a month of forced vacation due to the industrial action embarked upon by the civil servants in the state.

In some of the schools visited, both students and teachers refused to resume for academic activities except a few schools where some principal staff were seen in their offices.
When asked to comment on the boycott, the principal officers refused to speak on the development.
However, a teacher who spoke with THISDAY on account of anonymity, explained that none of the teachers would resume until an order was issued by the leadership of the labour union.

“The teachers had a pending issue with the state government which is yet to be resolved. It is only the union leadership that will issue a directive to the workers to resume work because it is the union that declared the strike in the first place, and not the government,” the teacher said.
The state government last Friday gave an order to the aggrieved workers to resume work, and also directed the schools to re-open yesterday.

The schools were shut last month following the engagements of some students in anti-government protest.

The state Commissioner for Information, Mr. Toye Arulogun, last Friday, in a news briefing in Ibadan, said the decision to re-open the schools was reached after several representatives of various stakeholders met with the government.

The commissioner had noted that the 17 schools that had been identified as participants in last month’s protest would remain shut until the managements of those schools obtained an apology from the students and submited an undertaking that the students would not engage in such demonstrations again.