Osun State Governor, Ademola Adeleke, and his predecessor, Gboyega Oyetola, have been trading words over the increasing rate of out-of-school children in the state.
Oyetola, who is now the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, anchored his argument on the sacking of 1,500 teachers his administration recruited to augment shortage of teachers by Adeleke, saying parents have refused to take their children to school because of lack of teachers.
Oyetola, while speaking through his former Special Adviser on Political Affairs, Sunday Akere, implored Adeleke not to politicise the education sector in the state.
He explained how he engaged the services of 1,500 teachers, alleging that they had been fired politically by Adeleke.
“My advice to the government is that it should not play politics with education,” he declared.
But, reacting, Adeleke, through his Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Kolapo Alimi, yesterday, claimed that Oyetola committed many atrocities when he was the governor of the state, and therefore asked President Bola Tinubu to be cautious of his dealings with the minister, saying Oyetola “portends bad omen.”
Adeleke attributed the huge number of out-of-school children in Osun to years of neglect of the education sector inherited from Oyetola administration, listing upcoming recruitment of 6,000 teachers as part of the administration’s three-pronged approach to redressing the situation.
“It is on records that the last administration in a series of post election booby traps employed over 10,000 workers to make the state ungovernable for the incoming Adeleke government, a development the new government promptly addressed with six executive orders to restore normalcy,” he said.
