The Kogi State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Wemi Jones, has described as absolute falsehood a report making the rounds in some sections of the online media that Governor Yahaya Bello has reportedly ordered the sack of Kogi teachers who are not APC supporters.
Jones, in a statement issued in Lokoja, described the report as fake, baseless and a figment of the imagination of unscrupulous individuals masquerading under the guise of the opposition with the intention to create disaffection amongst teachers and workers in the state.
The commissioner said that, contrary to the fake report, the Kogi State Government was on the verge of releasing the list of 1,500 successful applicants to be employed as teachers in the secondary schools in the state as part of the first phase of an ongoing recruitment exercise for teachers.
He said that it would interest the authors of the sponsored report to learn that in the recent transparent exercise carried out to recruit teachers in the State, nobody was asked to show his or her party membership card, “whether he is APC or PDP, rather, for everybody that was interviewed, what mattered was whether the applicant possessed the requisite qualification to be a teacher in the State or not.”
Noting that the present administration in Kogi placed much premium on the recruitment and improvement of the welfare of teachers and workers in general, Jones said, “At no time was any directive issued to local government Chairmen in the state, as contained in the report, to compile the names of teachers not sympathetic to the APC.”
He pointed out that no compilation of names of teachers was ever contemplated, adding that the present administration of Gov Bello was one that had instead repositioned the education sector in Kogi for the future.
The commissioner said, “In the last seven years under the leadership of Governor Yahaya Bello, we made the building and renovation of primary schools across the state top priority. The GYB Model Science Secondary Schools across the state are another signature of the Yahaya Bello Administration that has remained a watershed in the state’s education history.
“In the area of technical and vocational education, the state has reawakened all the moribund technical colleges in the state. The technical colleges in Idah and others have been renovated, remodelled and are nearing completion with the aim of reawakening technical and vocational education.”
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