By OUR REPORTER
For over 72 hours up till evening of Sunday September 11, 2022, The DEFENDER continued to be inundated with complaints from sections of the Nigerian education community especially those that are connected with Federal unity schools.
Their complaint stems from the standpoint of allegation that no fewer than 22 senior officials of the Ministry of Education, who are teachers by profession and who had attained the mandatory age of retirement (60 years) since 2021, were included among the newly appointed Principals of Federal Unity schools comprising of Federal Government Colleges and Federal Government Girl’s Colleges across the country.
When, this Monday morning of September 12, 2022 we decided to make our final move to treat the complaints and we are neither able to reach the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, nor his Ministry’s Director of Press Mr Gom and we considered it proper to start from somewhere while details of truth of the matter will be made public later, if they come.
Trouble started when some serving Principals were invited for CBT examination in Abuja over three weeks ago with a view of ‘eliminating’ some of them; so as to consider some new GL.17 Officers for Principals’ appointments even though the serving Principals were not due for retirement, we gathered.
According to competent sources, ‘this elimination and substitution process’, which is believed to be alien to civil service procedure, started with the examination and oral interview of selected Principals. The question being raised was how could the examinations be for selected Principals and not for all? Why examination when they are not to be promoted to higher status like Permanent Secretaries and so on and so forth?
This process was reliably kicked against by the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, which pointed out the flaws in the exercise in line with Civil Service Procedure but the Ministry, those who alleged said, refused to listen.
However, where the process ran into trouble was when the list of the new Principals was released, some serving Principals were eliminated from the list. This prompted investigations to be conducted, which revealed among others that for more than one year, some Assistant Directors and Deputy Directors, who have had their salaries stopped through IPPIS because they had attained the age of 60 are on the list. The investigation revealed further that instead of the Ministry asking them to retire, it did not do so; but started a process that would make them to continue their service until they attained the age of 65 based on the elongation of tenure announced by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Condemnation has trailed the release of 112 names as new Principals, as 22 out of them were supposed to have retired because the law that permits elongation of service, that is the Act 2022 on elongation signed by President Buhari, puts 7th April, 2022 as the effective date for commencement of the elongation.
Tongues started wagging as Human Resources (HR) Experts and Public Administrators including those still in the Federal Public Service maintained that, with that effective date as contained in the Act and further gazetted in the Federal Government Gazette, no officer that attained the age of 60 last year (2022) till March 2022 could benefit from the elongation as the Act has excluded them.
In the Public Service, it is well known that when Laws are enacted, effective date is crucial for proper implementation to avoid glaring errors such as the one allegedly committed by the Federal Ministry of Education.
While ASUU strike persists, posting of supposedly retired civil servants along with the newly appointed Principals have been matter of total condemnation by serving officers of the Ministry across the Country accusing the Ministry of incompetence and inefficiency.
Sources placed the blame of this maladministration on a new Top Functionary of the Ministry, which was allegedly to be interested in certain senior officers to be posted as Principals to schools for pecuniary interests.
It is unlikely that the 7th April, 2022 effective date for implementation of the Act on Elongation of Tenure of teachers would change as the National Assembly and the Presidency would never make any Law to take retrospective effect, as that was why the effect of the elongation was made on the date the President signed it into Law.
There were other agitations on the new Principals appointment as it was not based on Federal Character principles known to civil service procedures. There was also the religious discrimination and bias evidenced by the fact that out of 112 new Principals appointed, only 23 are Muslims – situation the complainants described as ‘highly condemnable!’
Reports confirmed that the new Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education was allegedly implementing a Christian agenda that was hitherto not the practice in the Ministry.
In addition, it was reported that a School Principal in a South-West state, who was sent on compulsory leave as a serious disciplinary procedure and who fell into the category of retired Principals, was hurriedly recalled and posted to another FGC in North Central part of the country.
Reports say that Principal of the North Central FGC, she was posted to from South West, had been described as highly responsible, dutiful, committed and dedicated officer to her job. It was further pointed out that, perhaps under the alleged implementation of Christian agenda by Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, she was being frustrated out of the School even as she enjoys the confidence and affection of all irrespective religion or ethnicity. Those alleging wondered what would become the future of that School if such a Principal is transferred and the new one with alleged blemish records takes over.
The Federal Government, specifically the Honourable Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, has been called upon to urgently look into the affairs of both Secondary and Tertiary Education in Nigeria in the face of the current trend.
This call was coming at a time some of the infringements on rights of citizens by some overzealous managers of state establishments, which have been blamed for ethnic and religious controversies also causing insecurity in the country, are blamed on incompetence of some the people charged to ensure the proper and effective checks and balances but failed.
