By Ebitonye Akpodigha
Nigeria’s Senate President, Mr Bukola Saraki, has made a passionate appeal to the government to give more priority to salaries of teachers in the country.
Mr Saraki pointed out that the welfare of teachers and payment of their salaries were more important than capital expenditure.
According to him, capital investments should be left alone to the private sector so as to allow the government to pay more attention to social infrastructure, including payment of salaries.
Mr Saraki promised that the Senate would work towards ensuring that salaries of teachers in the country were paid promptly.
“The challenge is that we give priority to capital expenditure over the payment of teachers’ salaries.
“That is emphasising quantity over quality. Salaries are more important than capital expenditure and salaries of teachers cannot be left as a responsibility of the local government,” the Senate President said on Friday at the 2016 Founder’s Day lecture of the King’s College, Lagos.
“In developed countries, governments focus on social infrastructure like payment of salaries and leave the private sector to deal with the provision of rails, roads and other capital investments,” Mr Saraki, who himself is an old boy of the school, said at the occasion.
He said further that, “These have been taken over by the private sector, leaving government to focus on social infrastructure. Education is no longer an interesting sector for teachers to go into. I have taken it up at the Senate and until something happens, nobody is going to have peace.”
Modupe Gbadeyanka