The investigation committee set up by the Nasarawa State government to probe the irregularities that trailed the recent employment of teachers in the state has revealed how the unsuspecting applicants were made to pay huge amounts of money in exchange for appointment letters.
Presenting the report to Governor Abdullahi Sule, the chairman of the committee, Silas Dachor, said officials of the State Teachers Service Commission, charged between N500,000 to 700,000 per applicant in abuse of due process during the exercise.
He said an Access Bank account number was provided for the applicants to pay the money into as appreciation to facilitate the issuance of appointment letters.
“In relation to this, an Access Bank account was provided for interested applicants who were directed to pay in amounts ranging from N500,000 to N700,000 for what was termed appreciation to facilitate the issuance of appointment letter,” he said.
Dachor said the committee discovered that the TSC willfully disobeyed the governor’s instruction to recruit only 1,000 by going ahead to engage 3,277 teachers.
“Indeed, there are hundreds of others in possession of appointment letters who are yet to be posted. This, to say the least, amounts to gross insubordination to His Excellency and a great disservice to the government and people of Nasarawa State.
“Furthermore, the committee found out that the recruitment did not in any way reflect the needs of the school system, contrary to the rationale of the exercise, which was to fill existing vacancies.
“We also found that the exercise did not show a fair spread across local government areas and, worse still, there was no evidence that the recruitment was based on merit but merely selective, thus edging out other potential candidates,” he said.
Responding, Governor Sule expressed dismay over the magnitude of corruption that trailed the exercise.
He said the only option left to the state government was to handover the affected officials to security agencies for prosecution.
“The aspect of them collecting money from people, I don’t even have the power to handle that.
“The security agencies should be involved to see how these innocent children would get back their money.
“How do we accommodate 3,277 teachers today in Nasarawa State? Where are you going to get the money to pay them? Where are you posting them?
“But that is not even the biggest worry. The biggest worry is that the entire exercise was not done on merit, which means we have engaged people who are not qualified to be posted as teachers,” he said.
He said the state government has no capacity to engage over 3000 teachers.
“We employ people because of the vacancies that exist. You can’t go employing teachers without knowing where to post them.
“The most important thing is not about politics but about the education of our own children.
“This is beyond politics. We are not going to build a society until we have a society of people who are educated.
“We cannot have a society of educated people unless we have the right teachers,” he explained.
