Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike, has taken a swipe at the National Assembly’s Area Council Committees for allegedly abandoning their oversight responsibilities amid the prolonged strike by primary school teachers in the territory.

Teachers in public primary schools across the six Area Councils in the FCT have been on strike since February 2025 for failure to implement the N70,000 minimum wage.

Wike, who spoke on Wednesday during a routine inspection of ongoing infrastructure projects across Abuja, expressed disappointment that legislators have failed to call elected area council chairmen to order, despite the continued closure of public primary schools in the FCT.

“The chairmen of the committees of the House and Senate on Area Councils should be asking: Why are the children still at home? But instead, they focus on irrelevant things and invite ministers to defend budgets outside their purview,” he said.

“We thought by now, they would have engaged the area council chairmen to ask, ‘What is the issue? How do we solve it?’ But all they want is to create division within the FCT. That won’t work.”

Wike warned that denying children access to education is tantamount to sabotaging democracy and stressed that every effort is being made to ensure the return of teachers to the classroom.

“Denying people education is like staging a coup in the FCT. Be assured that we are working behind the scenes, and very soon this issue will be resolved. No responsible government can be happy seeing teachers at home,” he said.