FCT Strike Enters Second Day as Rival Teachers’ Union Rejects Action
An indefinite strike called by the Nigeria Labour Congress in the Federal Capital Territory entered its second day on Thursday, deepening a confrontation over teachers’ promotion and welfare even as a secondary-school teachers’ union rejected the action and told its members to remain at work.
The FCT Council of the NLC began the strike on Wednesday, October 7, directing workers in public and private establishments to stay away from work after the union said the Federal Capital Territory Administration failed to satisfactorily resolve its demands.
At the centre of the dispute is the use of a vacancy requirement in the promotion of teachers.
The NLC argues that teachers employed by the FCT education system are not core civil servants or pool officers and should therefore not have their advancement tied to the availability of vacant positions. It says the system has contributed to prolonged career stagnation.
The union is also demanding that teachers eligible for the 2025 promotion exercise be allowed to sit for their examination and that redeployment or demotion decisions affecting some directors covered by the Harmonised Retirement Age for Teachers Act, 2022, be reversed.
FCTA had responded before the strike
The FCTA had taken administrative steps before the strike began.
In a letter dated September 29, FCTA Head of Civil Service Nancy Nathan informed the union that FCT Minister Nyesom Wike had directed a stay of action on the disputed issues.
The letter also said the FCT Civil Service Commission should reschedule the 2025 promotion examination for affected education officers.
The administration expressed a commitment to addressing other outstanding matters.
But the NLC rejected the response as inadequate.
The labour council said the FCTA had not resolved what it considered the central problem — the continued application of the vacancy requirement — and had not satisfactorily addressed the redeployment of senior directors.
It therefore proceeded with the indefinite strike.
The immediate accountability question is now whether the measures announced by the FCTA have actually been implemented: when the rescheduled promotion examination will hold, which affected officers are covered and what decision has been taken on the disputed vacancy rule.
Rival union rejects strike
The Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools, FCT chapter, has taken a different position.
Its chairman, Julius Ogundiran, directed secondary-school teachers and education officers to report for normal duties, describing the strike as premature and potentially harmful to students’ academic progress.
ASUSS also argued that some of the grievances cited by labour had already received administrative attention.
The union said the 2025 promotion exercise would run alongside the 2026 cycle and maintained that the vacancy requirement remains part of the Public Service Rules governing establishment control and financial planning.
It also defended the administration’s authority over the redeployment of education officials.
Those remain positions advanced by ASUSS and do not independently establish that the wider dispute has been resolved.
The split between the NLC-backed directive and ASUSS means the declaration of a territory-wide strike cannot by itself establish that every school, hospital, government office or private establishment in Abuja has stopped operating.
What matters now is compliance on the ground.
What residents face
For parents and students, the first test is whether schools are actually open and functioning and which union directive teachers are following.
For residents more broadly, the impact will depend on how far the NLC action affects hospitals, government offices and other public services.
Those consequences must be established service by service rather than inferred from the strike declaration alone.
Early Thursday reporting confirmed that the industrial action had begun following the expiration of the NLC ultimatum.
But the reports reviewed by IDNN did not establish a complete territory-wide picture of compliance.
That gap is now central to the story.
The dispute is no longer simply about whether the FCTA responded to organised labour — it did.
The sharper question is whether those measures resolve the promotion dispute in practice, whether the announced rescheduling of the 2025 examination has been implemented and whether both sides can prevent an administrative disagreement from imposing a wider cost on students, workers and residents across the capital.
