The Kaduna Division of the National Industrial Court on Thursday
stopped the planned sack of 21,780 primary school teachers who failed a
competency test organised by the state government.
Daily
Trust recalls that the lawyer representing the teachers, Samuel Atum, had on
October 30 filed a motion of “interlocutory injunction”, asking the court to
restrain the government from dismissing or disengaging any teacher on the basis
of the test conducted in June 2017.
The case was earlier adjourned to February 6th, 2018 for hearing.
However,
at the hearing today which was attended by hundreds of teachers and labour
leaders, the lawyer, Mr. Atum, praised the court for “graciously” giving the
order.
He
said, “This is democracy and the premise of democracy is the rule of law, so we
expect nothing more than absolute submission by the state government to comply
with the order of the court. I have confidence that the government will comply
or obey this order.”
Lawyers
representing the state’s Attorney General and the State Government, as well as
Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) declined comments when
approached by journalists.
Some
teachers who spoke to our correspondent said the ruling was encouraging. “It
has given us hope. We hope too that the governor will obey the court order,”
Zainab Sanusi, a teacher, said.
It
will be recalled that the planned sack of over 20, 000 teachers sparked
controversy, condemnation and protests.
Some
of the scripts released by the government showed that many of the teachers
supplied ridiculous answers to basic questions while about two-thirds of the
teachers failed to score up to 75 percent in the grading.
The
Kaduna government has since vowed to sack the affected workers, despite threats
by the local chapter of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), to embark on
indefinite strike.
The government also said it would recruit 25,000
qualified teachers in their stead
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