Popular activist and social media personality, Martins Otse, widely known as VeryDarkMan (VDM), on Monday led a symbolic protest at the gate of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike’s office in Abuja.
The protest was in response to the prolonged strike by primary school teachers in the FCT over unpaid minimum wage.
Since March 24, primary school teachers across Abuja have been on an indefinite strike, following the failure of area council chairpersons to implement the new national minimum wage of N70,000. The prolonged industrial action has left thousands of schoolchildren out of class and many communities without basic healthcare services.
As a show of protest, VeryDarkMan gathered schoolchildren dressed in uniforms and set up a makeshift open-air classroom outside Wike’s office. In a creative display, he taught the children alphabets with satirical lines such as, “S for Suegbe, T for Tinubu, W for Wike,” while declaring the minister’s gate their new learning ground. Photos and videos of the protest quickly went viral on social media.
The protest came days after Wike announced that 10% of the FCT’s internally generated revenue (IGR) allocated to area councils would be withheld, blaming their failure to pay teachers’ salaries and implement the wage adjustment.
During the protest, the children were also seen taking a break and eating food reportedly provided by VDM and his supporters, highlighting the activist’s commitment to drawing attention to the crisis affecting young learners in Abuja.
In a show of solidarity, the Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR) backed VeryDarkMan’s protest, condemning what they described as the authorities’ neglect of workers’ welfare. In a statement, CDWR’s Abuja Coordinator, Adaramoye Michael Lenin, decried the shutdown of public schools and primary healthcare centres, and called for broader worker mobilization through the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to demand immediate action.
The group also slammed the federal and FCT governments for prioritizing high-end projects like, the N39 billion renovation of the International Conference Centre, over essential services, accusing them of “callous negligence” toward the poor and working class.