Over six hundred retrenched teachers in Adamawa State are kicking against a lull in the move by the government to execute a court judgement in their favour.
The affected teachers who were recruited by the Murtala Nyako government in 2013, were laid off in 2014 during Ahmadu Fintiri’s brief tenure as acting governor.
The teachers who appealed to the National Industrial Court for redress got a ruling ordering their reinstatement when the administration of Governor Jibrila Bindow had already set in.
The Bindow administration bowed out without reinstating them and although the current administration of Ahmadu Fintiri has taken steps after its inauguration last year, the teachers are yet to get their dues.
They have now resurrected their protest, accusing the government of deceit and contempt of court which ordered a judgement sum of N770, 325,000 and reinstatement of the teachers into the civil service.
The protesting teachers are in what is called Batch D1, being the batch of recruited teachers affected by the controversial sack.
Leader of the Bach D1 Teachers, Fred Mbashi, told newsmen in Yola, “We agreed with the government that it will reabsorb us into the civil service. To that effect, we were screened while the state government promised to start settling the judgement sum on a monthly basis by paying us N64 million monthly from March 2020
“But since then, nothing has happened, nobody addressed us, nobody talked to us about the agreement,” Fred said, adding that what is preventing them from approaching the court again is the COVID-19 induced recess.
Reacting to the complaint, the Chairman of the committee which screened the teachers, Mr Sunday Stephen who is also the Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Adamawa State Ministry of Education, said he had submitted the report of his screening of the affected teachers to the appropriate authorities.
“We screened them and raised a report and we submitted the same report to the government and all of a sudden, the lockdown came because of the COVID-19 and at that time government activities could not hold again,” he said.
