By Suleiman Abubakar MAPSA
Governor, Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa state has vowed to hand over suspended officials of the Nasarawa State Teachers' Service Commission (NSTSC) to security agencies for allegedly extorting money from applicants during the recent teacher recruitment exercise.
Governor Sule made this declaration on Thursday at the Government House, Lafia, after receiving the report of the investigative committee set up to probe irregularities in the NSTSC recruitment process. The investigation uncovered that 2,277 unapproved teachers were employed in violation of the state’s directive to recruit only 1,000 teachers.
He expressed outrage at the scale of the fraud, describing it as a betrayal of the trust placed in the commission.
He emphasized that the involvement of money in the issuance of appointment letters goes beyond administrative misconduct and requires intervention from security agencies.
"These people will be reported to the security agencies because this is beyond administration. Collecting money from applicants for appointments is a crime that I don’t have the power to handle. Security agencies must be involved to ensure these innocent children get their money back," Governor Sule said.
He lamented that such unethical practices could jeopardize efforts to improve the standard of education in the state. According to the Governor, the exercise not only disregarded merit but also filled the teaching profession with unqualified personnel, further weakening the state’s education system.
Recruitment Scandal: 3,277 Teachers Hired Instead of 1,000
The Governor revealed that the commission recruited 3,277 teachers without considering available vacancies or the state's financial capacity to pay them.
"How do we accommodate 3,277 teachers in Nasarawa State today? Where do we get the money to pay them? More worrisome is that the entire exercise was not done on merit, which means we have hired people who are not qualified to be teachers," he said.
Governor Sule warned that the future of Nasarawa's children is at stake, urging the public to see the issue beyond political considerations. He hinted at the possibility of conducting a fresh selection process to ensure that only the 1,000 most qualified candidates are recruited.
Fraudulent Recruitment: Cash-for-Appointment Scheme Exposed
Earlier, the chairman of the investigative committee, Silas Dachor, disclosed that the NSTSC deliberately ignored the Governor’s instruction to recruit only 1,000 teachers and instead engaged in a fraudulent recruitment process.
Dachor said the recruitment turned into a "cash-and-carry" scheme where applicants paid between N500,000 and N700,000 for appointment letters. An Access Bank account was reportedly provided for payments, raising serious concerns about transparency and fairness.
"The recruitment exercise was reduced to a racketeering venture, with desperate and unsuspecting applicants scrambling for employment on a cash-and-carry basis," he said.
The committee found that the recruitment did not reflect the needs of the state’s schools and lacked fairness in its distribution across local government areas.
Government’s Next Steps
Governor Sule assured that all illegally recruited teachers already posted to schools would be paid but subsequently relieved of their duties.
"We will pay those posted, but we cannot retain them. If a school requires 40 teachers, and you post 300, it does more harm than good. The bigger issue is that many of them are not qualified to teach," the Governor explained.
He stressed that building an educated society requires employing the right teachers and not compromising on standards for political or personal gains.
Gratitude for Federal Support
On a positive note, Governor Sule expressed gratitude to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for signing the North Central Development Commission (NCDC) bill into law, with Lafia as its capital. He also thanked the National Assembly members who championed the bill.
The Governor concluded by appreciating the committee for its thorough work and urged the public to support the government’s efforts to restore sanity in teacher recruitment for the good of the state’s education Sector.
