By Adebayo Adedeji
Is it true that Governor Ademola Adeleke has secretly re-absorbed some of the 1,500 teachers employed by his predecessor, Adegboyega Oyetola, but dismissed through his draconian Executive Order in November 2022? Is it true the current teachers’ recruitment is to compensate the PDP leaders and friends of the government? I will return to these questions later.
At his inauguration on 27 November 2022, Governor Ademola Adeleke, like a bull in a china shop, had announced the dismissal of 1,500 school teachers employed by the preceding administration, claiming that the employment process was illegal and was a landmine created to destabilise his government.
The teachers were bonafide Osun indigenes who did not only pass the written examination set by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, ( the technical experts engaged for the recruitment), but also scaled the series of rigorous oral interview sessions designed to confirm their suitability for the teaching role.
All entreaties to Governor Adeleke to reinstate the embattled teachers fell on deaf ears, even when it was reported that no fewer than four of the concerned teachers had died, barely two months after the sadistic review of the governor, on account of complications arising from depression
Reacting to the plights of the distraught teachers, the Special Assistant on Community Communications to the governor, Tunde Busari, in Jan. 2023, said there was no going back on the demonic sack of the teachers.
In fact he said those engaging in demonstrations, to press home their appeal, were APC members smuggled into the state payroll by former Governor Oyetola.
According to him, “Those APC members are now playing the script. They have failed from the beginning as this administration will not bow to unjustified demands from those who collaborated to deepen Osun financial woes.
He added that no amount of demonstration and blackmail could change the reality that those teachers had been dismissed.
But alas, there is a credible information indicating that some PDP affiliates who were part of the 1,500 sacked teachers have been secretly reabsorbed and posted to schools to teach.
This is coming at a time the state government is claiming to be conducting fresh teachers’ recruitment.
The new recruitment process, which has been strongly criticized by job applicants for its shoddiness, is touted to employ 5,000 teachers. However, many have expressed their lack of confidence in the whole process, adding that it is a smokescreen aimed at rewarding politicians.
According to them, there is every reason to believe that the recruitment is fashioned to favour family members, political cronies and children of politicians, reason the aptitude tests conducted by the state government on 27 and 28 March were poorly organised.
In the words of one of the job applicants, “It is strange that the state government, after obtaining N2,500 job application fee, and in many cases, additional N10,000 for State of Origin Certificate, from poor and struggling job seekers, they could not conduct decent aptitude test. It is shameful. This recruitment exercise (examination) is rubbish and arrant nonsense.
“I participated in the 2021 recruitment process though I didn’t make the final list. It was well scheduled, prepared and organised, unlike this one we experienced yesterday at UNIOSUN. Exams, scheduled to start by 8am, didn’t start until 5pm in many centres. Again, the questions were sub-standard: as if they were not vetted by test measurement experts. The government should not have wasted our time when they knew slots had been handed to their cronies and party members,” the applicant recounted her awful experience and disappointment.
1. Were the tests ill-fated, as being rumoured, to serve the selfish interest of the people in government?
2. Is it true that the state government has reabsorbed some of the 1,500 teachers earlier sacked?
3. If yes, how many of them were reabsorbed?
4. How many candidates applied for the current teachers’ recruitment?
5. What is the fate of the unlucky applicants who could not be enrolled for the test or whose tests were either cancelled or postponed indefinitely owing to the organisational incompetence of the government handlers saddled with the process?
The government must address the foregoing questions in order to demonstrate to the worried job seekers that it is committed to a transparent and fair recruitment process. This is the responsible thing the state government should do, and urgently, in this situation.
