Governor Sheriff Oborevwori disclosed in Asaba this month that he earns ₦503,000 a month, while Permanent Secretaries in the Delta State civil service take home ₦900,000 and the Head of Service earns ₦1 million. He attributed the gap to the state’s implementation of the new national minimum wage, noting that Delta was among the first states in the country to adopt it and chose to pay it in full.
Teachers sit on that same civil service structure, which is why those figures matter to anyone weighing up a teaching career here. If you’re about to apply for the state’s teacher recruitment, or you’re already teaching and trying to work out where you stand, this is what can actually be confirmed about the money.
Nobody in Delta’s public service now earns below ₦70,000
The national minimum wage was raised to ₦70,000, and Delta implemented it in full after consultations between the Head of Service, the Commissioner for Information and the Nigeria Labour Congress. That gives you a hard floor. Whatever your grade level, a Delta State public school teacher on the payroll cannot legally be paid less than that as a basic monthly wage.
This matters because a lot of the salary figures still circulating online for Delta teachers were published before the wage increase took effect, and some of them sit below the current legal minimum. If you come across a figure in the thirties or forties, it’s describing a pay structure that no longer exists.
Your qualification decides your entry point, not your subject
Teachers in Delta public schools are paid on the civil service grade level structure rather than a separate teaching scale. Where you enter depends on what you hold when you’re employed. Someone coming in with an NCE starts lower than a graduate entering with a B.Ed or a degree plus PGDE, and that gap follows you for years because promotion moves you up a level at a time.
Within each grade level there are also steps, and you move up a step annually based on service. So two teachers on the same grade level can be earning different amounts depending on how long each has been in the system. Promotion between levels depends on years served, performance and in some cases additional qualifications, which is why teachers who go back for a Master’s or a second degree tend to overtake colleagues who started at the same time.
Subject specialism doesn’t change your grade level in the public system, though it does affect how easily you get hired. Delta’s Executive Council specifically noted a shortage of science teachers in public secondary schools when it approved fresh recruitment, so a chemistry or physics teacher is competing in a much thinner field than a CRS teacher applying for the same intake.
Delta pays a 13th month, and it’s about to become law
This is the part that genuinely separates Delta from most states, and a lot of applicants don’t factor it in. The state approved a 13th month salary for civil servants beginning December 2026, meaning an extra month’s pay each year on top of your twelve.
The government has gone further and is sending an executive bill to the Delta State House of Assembly to give the payment legal backing, so it survives changes of administration. As the governor put it, once it has legal backing, workers will still receive it after he leaves office in 2031. Delta has over 60,000 civil servants, so this isn’t a token gesture aimed at a small group.
Practically, that means your real annual earnings are thirteen months of your monthly figure rather than twelve. When you’re comparing a state teaching job against a private school offer, that difference is worth calculating properly before you decide.
Where the career actually leads
Teaching in the public system is a civil service career, and the ceiling is higher than most people entering it assume. The progression runs through senior teacher and head of department roles into school administration, and from there into the wider civil service where directors, Permanent Secretaries and the Head of Service sit.
The governor’s own disclosure gives you the shape of that ladder. Permanent Secretaries at ₦900,000 and a Head of Service at ₦1 million are earning more than the governor himself at ₦503,000, and the state recently raised Permanent Secretaries’ pay after they complained that directors were earning almost the same as them. Delta also appointed twelve new Permanent Secretaries in May so that every one of the state’s 25 local government areas is represented at that level, which tells you something about how those positions get distributed.
Alongside salary, the state runs a Public Officers’ Vehicle Loan Scheme and a Public Officers’ Housing Loan Scheme, with 302 and 119 beneficiaries respectively as of this month. Civil servants interested in farming have also been supplied with farm inputs as a way of generating additional income. None of that shows up in a salary figure, but it’s part of what the job pays.
How to get the exact figure for your grade level
Delta State does not publish a public grade level table for teachers, and any site presenting one as official is guessing. The reliable route is to ask directly. The Post Primary Education Board and the State Universal Basic Education Board both handle teacher employment and can confirm what a specific grade level and step pays.
If you’re already teaching, your payslip and your school’s bursary give you the answer for your own level, and colleagues a few levels above you will tell you where the ladder goes. If you’re applying, ask during screening rather than after you’ve accepted, and ask specifically what grade level your qualification places you on, since that single number determines everything that follows.
Recruitment is open more often than people realise
Delta approved the recruitment of 2,000 teachers through the Post Primary Education Board and SUBEB, with applications running through the state portal at jobs.deltastatemobse.net. The Executive Council has since directed the Ministry of Secondary Education to prepare a memo on further teacher recruitment to address the shortage in science subjects, so more intakes are coming.
Windows like these open and close quickly, and the paperwork catches people out more often than the qualifications do. Our guide on how to apply for jobs covers the documents worth having scanned and ready before an advert appears, and we publish state and federal recruitment openings here as they’re announced.
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