Shortage Of Teachers: Reverse Your Sack Of 1,500 Teachers, APC Tells Adeleke

Dele Olaosebikan 

THE Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has described it as counterproductive for the government at any level to politicise educational policy as its unintended boomerang effects may have a devastating results on innocent pupils and students. 

The APC, in a statement endorsed by Tajudeen Lawal, Osun State Acting Chairman, opined that the PDP-led administration needlessly caused a cataclysm in the education sector at the onset of its government with one of his obnoxious executive orders sacking 1,500 teachers.

“Governor Adeleke took the decision out of hatred and vindictiveness as anything that has to do with his predecessor, former Governor Gboyega Oyetola, was reversed.

“He sacked the 1,500 teachers out of the 2,500  recruited by the latter for no just cause other than the display of euphoria that he has become the caretaker of the state in all ramifications.

“Oyetola who had initially recruited 1,000 teachers had disclosed that he would make the teachers’ recruitment up to 2,500 by adding another 1,500 based on the financial capability of the state then.

“It was however, surprising that the victims of one of the unpopular and ill-thought-out executive orders of Governor Adeleke was the immediate sack of the last batch of the 1,500 public school teachers recruited by Oyetola during the period that he statutorily functioned as the executive governor of the state.

Eighteen-Eleven Media recalls that the Osun State chairman of the National Union of Teachers, Comrade Muritala Falade, had voiced out in an interview in a local newspaper in Osogbo some days ago, alerting the public to the fact that there is a serious dearth of teachers in all the public schools in the state.

The worried Falade explained further that the worst hit about the shortage of teachers are the schools in the rural areas.

However, reacting to the SOS  In his response, Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement issued by the party’s Director of Media and Information, Chief Kola Olabisi, in Osogbo on Monday, 26 June 2023 was full of encomiums for Comrade Falade for having the courage, leadership will and unionism dexterity to voice out the unpalatable situation of the public schools.

Lawal enjoined all the parents and guardians to show their gratitude to the state NUT chairman as he has nothing to lose if he has not come up with such a rare courage to furnish the members of the public about the excruciating condition of the public schools orchestrated by the shortage of teachers.

The Acting State APC chairman told Governor Adeleke point-blank that he could now see and realise that his decision to sack the 1,500 teachers was not well thought out by him and that the action was rash, impertinent, brash and borne out of vindictiveness and executive recklessness.

Lawal explained that no serious-minded government worth its salt would play dirty politics with the education of the younger ones who are the fulcrum of the future of the state.

He hinted that it is not too late for Governor Adeleke to go back to his vomit by instantly recalling the 1,500 teachers recruited by Oyetola that he had sacked without any justification under the law of the land.

In Lawal’s words: “Since those recruited teachers are indigenes of Osun State and were duly employed during the statutory tenure of his predecessor, Governor Adeleke has no reason not to reconsider his earlier mistake of relieving the innocent teachers of their employment.

“We are quite aware that Governor Adeleke won’t be bringing new teachers from another planet or states as the ones sacked by him were products of due process.

“A stitch in time saves nine, so says an adage”, the Acting Osun State APC chairman cautioned.

Eighteen-Eleven Media