14th August, 2015
Governor Ibikunle Amosun’s decision to fire six officials of the Ogun State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, including a secondary school teacher, over alleged offensive examination question amounts to high-handedness and should be condemned in the strongest of terms.
Amosun considered as offensive a comprehension passage in the English Language examination conducted by the ministry for the Unified Examination in Public Secondary Schools for the third term of the 2014/2015 academic session. The reference in the passage to the parlous state of education in Nigeria was perceived by the state government as an oblique reference to the shambolic state of education in Ogun State and this piqued the governor who ordered the sack of the six officials, two of them on Grade Level 17.
The sacked Level 17 officers are Mrs. Folashade Oresegun (the Director, Education Support Services) and Mr. Rotimi Odunsi (the Director, Curriculum Development and Evaluation). The others who got booted out are a Grade Level 16 officer, Mr. Majekodunmi Oluwole, Grade Level 10 officer, Mr. E.O. Asegbe; Grade Level 8 officer, Taylor Damilola, and Mr. Joel Adegbenro, who teaches English Language in Mayflower Secondary School, Ikenne.
The action clearly shows that the governor is either power-drunk or he was misled to take such a draconian action. Everyone knows that the education sector in the country, not only in Ogun State, needs a shot in the arm if the standard must be improved. The evidence of the poor state of education in the country is the mass failure in Mathematics and English Language in public examinations such as WASSCE, NECO, GCE, etc.
We join all well-meaning Nigerians in calling for the immediate re-instatement of the sacked workers. We believe the Governor Amosun-led Ogun State Government is too civilised to inflict such a punishment on its workers over an innocuous issue that any governor who claims to be interested in free and qualitative education should have taken in his stride. Should the government fail to re-instate the workers, the affected workers should seek redress in a court of law.