The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has lamented the incessant killings and kidnapping of teachers by Boko Haram insurgents in the North East and other parts of the country, threatening to shut down schools if adequate security is not provided around them.
NUT President Dr Nasir Idris made the disclosure in Abuja at the weekend.
‘I can say, we have lost almost 800 teachers in the North East. And this issue of banditry in the Northwest is not that we have lost teachers but teachers were being kidnapped together with their students because some of the teachers insisted they must go with their students if the students were going to be taken,’ he said.
‘They said if you are going to take our children, carry us all together because we can’t just let our students go with you.
‘We have lost a lot of members as far as this issue is concerned. So, we said the government, as a matter of urgency, should provide security in those places, any place that we see that the Federal Government does not provide adequate security to mount those posts, we will shut it down. We can’t just put our children and teachers in trouble. So, that’s why we say that if security is not being provided, we will definitely ask teachers in those various areas to withdraw their services. We have made this point clear to the Federal Government.’
The NUT president assured that efforts were ongoing to ensure that the new salary structure for teachers is implemented in 2022 as promised by President Muhammadu Buhari.
