Musdapha Ilo, Maiduguri

Teachers in Borno State under the umbrella of the Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT, on Thursday joined the nationwide protest against the abduction of over 200 school girls from the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok.

The teachers, who marched to the Government House in Maiduguri, equally used the occasion to call on the federal government to give compensation to the families of 173 teachers killed by the insurgents in the last three years in Borno and Yobe states.

Deputy chairman of the Borno State NUT, Bako Lawan, who led union members on the peaceful protest said 170 of the slain teachers were from Borno, while the remaining three from Yobe.

“The insurgency which started around 2009 has claimed the lives of 170 teachers of primary and post primary in the state. We wish to also reached out to the families left behind to extend our condolences, the most recent one being the six teachers who were slain in their school G.S.S Dikwa on the night of 12th March, 2014 and their families” Lawan said.

He also lamented that family members of six teachers killed in a secondary school in Dikwa local government area of the state have been in the custody of Boko Haram sect since March.

The union decried the continuous closure of schools in the state due to the activities of the Boko Haram and called on both federal and state governments to provide adequate security in all schools, failing which teachers will remain at home even when the schools are re-opened.

“Education is the fundamental right of each and every child in this country and in this world, it is so sad that in this century some people want us to backslide into primitive era, they want us to be using hoes and cutlasses, they want us to go back and be using only herbs for medication but ironically these lunatics are using guns and ammunition’s produced using modern technology to kill innocent souls, what a contradictory,” he noted.