Shortage of Teachers: Reverse Your Sack of 1,500 Teachers as It’s Ineffective, APC Tells Adeleke

Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo

The Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has advised Governor Ademola Adeleke that it would be counterproductive for any government to politicise educational policy because its unintended effects would have a devastating result on innocent pupils and students.

The APC said that the Governor Adeleke needlessly caused cataclysm in the education sector at the onset of his administration with one of his obnoxious executive orders that sacked 1,500 teachers.

 The APC alleged that 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 1,500 teachers out of the 2,500 that were recruited by Oyetola for no just cause 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.

The Osun State Chairman of the National Union of Teachers, Mr. Muritala Falade, who is not a partisan politician, innocently voiced out in an interview in a local newspaper in Osogbo three days ago, alerting the public to the fact that there is a serious dearth of teachers in all the public schools in the state.

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

In his response, the Acting State Chairman of the APC, Mr. Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement that was issued yesterday by the party’s Director of Media and Information, Mr. Kola Olabisi, in Osogbo today, was full of encomiums for 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’s chairman his rare courage to furnish the members of the public about the excruciating shortage of teachers in public schools.

He told 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 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 recall the retrenched 1,500 teachers that were recruited by Oyetola. 

He said: “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.”