Ilorin Walkways and My Teacher-Friends

Rafiu Ajakaye

The important legacies of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq are the many walkways in every part of the capital city Ilorin. Beyond being pleasing aesthetics which set the new Ilorin apart from its old self, these walkways come with lifestyle change and numerous health benefits for everyone. They reduce incidents of vehicles hitting pedestrians, potentially causing injuries and deaths.

But equally significant is the platform for exercise that these beautiful walkways offer to all. We need to sit less, walk more, and reduce the sedentary lifestyle which experts blame for the many cardiovascular complications that we see everywhere. Ibn Khalidun, historian and social philosopher, in fact linked sedentary lifestyle to the fall of many civilisations. So, kudos to the governor for the thoughtful addition to the infrastructure in the state. It is one of his many legacies that our children will inherit and carry to the future.

These walkways have been accompanied by upgraded roads in every part of the city and beyond, especially in Offa town. But this infrastructure is seriously threatened by our general habits as a people. As I walk through these walkways every other day or on weekends, I observed that the roads, the walkways, and the drainages can only survive if we change our habits as a people.

Along with relevant government agencies doing their bits, people need to intentionally stop littering footpaths or dropping wastes as they drive by. I observed that virtually all the water outlets built to the walkways on Offa Road, for instance, are heavily littered with water sachet, trash, and other things.

The durability of public infrastructure hangs on how well we handle them. Burning trash on the road or improper refuse dump through water outlets of the walkways is a dangerous practice. Often, the difference between the lifespan of our infrastructure and the ones in Europe or US is the habit of the populace. To keep our infrastructure good and durable, our mindset needs to change. It is our headache if roads or schools built in two years collapse owing to the devil-may-care attitude to facilities done with our money. Let us care a lot more. That begins from every home: let’s decide to drop all the habits that damage public infrastructure.

A duty to ourselves

A few weeks ago, we debated to no end how esteemed teachers and Professor Shehu Raheem Adaramaja, SUBEB chief, picked trash at Amule Elementary School in Ilorin East. Painfully, we ignored the main issue: a collective inability to maintain standards and ethics to the extent that we have normalised things that we shouldn’t have. A Primary 3 pupil, for context, should have the orientation that trash is meant for the bin and that it is simply unacceptable to throw garbage from a moving vehicle to the road. Such basic orientation, among other things, will save us many problems.

As part of education multiplier effects, I plead that we adopt concerted cultivation in child rearing to refocus the trajectory of our nation right from the homestead.

Finally…

My love for our teachers is unmistakable. And so does the governor. They deserve every good thing that life has to offer. It is cheery, therefore, to have the governor approve 27.5% Teachers Specific Allowance (TSA), a move the NUT has commended. For context: the approval of the 27.5% TSA (in this form) is a 2012 prayer answered in 2025. Our teachers deserve it.

But the best is the enemy of the good. In addition to the TSA, which is exclusive to them, my teacher-friends want to also get the 30% peculiar allowance approved for civil servants in the core service. My reading of this position is that they just want better pay. It is normal for humans to want more. But there is a problem with their saying they want to benefit from the peculiar allowance which, right from the Federal Government where it emanated from, is meant for certain categories of workers.

The Peculiar Allowance was designed by the former Head of Service of the Federation, Dr. Yemi Esan and Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige, as a policy instrument to bridge the gap between what workers in the parastatals and agencies earned and what the core civil servants earned. It is a salary harmonization policy.

These core civil servants do not earn TSA or CONMESS (for doctors) or CONHESS (for nurses), among other benefits, hence the peculiar allowance.

As genuine as the campaign for improved welfare of my teacher-friends is, I fear that the fight to earn peculiar allowance is risky for everyone. Workers in other sectors may well agitate for the same. And my teacher-friends risk losing their TSA to counter agitations of equality from elsewhere. What is sustainable in many human endeavours is equity, not equality.

Two points need to be made here. The approval of the 27.5% TSA will add roughly N1.3bn to the wage bill every month, effective January 2026. That’s around N15.6bn more annually. This already has its consequences for governance deliverables, especially at the local government level, because tradeoffs are now inevitable for them. The money for the TSA is a tradeoff for other things they will not be able to do in the new year. But I feel that our teachers deserve it.

Also, the approval of TSA, which is calculated based on the new minimum wage, still places teachers above those in the mainstream service even with their 30% peculiar allowance. For instance, a level 7 step 1 in the core service will now earn 99,978.65 after the 30%, whereas a level 7 step 1 TSA teacher will earn N101,623.94. And while Level 8 Step 1 TSA teachers will now earn N106,648.57, their counterpart in the core service will earn N103, 962. 38. The gap continues like that.

If the government acceded to my teacher-friends’ request to also earn peculiar allowance, it means that a level 7 step 1 TSA teacher would earn N132,111.12 — exactly N32,132.47 more than their mate in the core service. This will further widen the gap the government had sought to reduce, defeat the whole essence of the peculiar allowance and wage harmonization policy, and trigger an unending service-wide civil war that will further destabilise the system. Stability is underrated.

Dear teachers, this administration cares for you, and this is glaring from the progress so far made in massive school infrastructure upgrade and your welfare: 345% outstanding salary arrears since 2016 paid up; prompt and full payment of salary; promotion arrears from 2017 fully implemented with 2025 already approved; disparity between TESCOM and SUBEB workers bridged; two new minimum wages implemented back to back; regular capacity building for SUBEB teachers since 2019; deductions of cooperatives restored; and annual incremental steps restored since the last three years — a first in many years.

The administration can only beat its own record and it always will because we do not doubt that you are a critical part of our journey. But let’s not trigger a civil war in the process. You always have the esteemed regards of this administration. Compliments of the season, everyone!

* Mr. Ajakaye is the Chief Press Secretary to the Kwara State governor