Outgoing Ogun State Governor Ibikunle Amosun, is leaving office in six days, without resolving the crisis at the Tai Solarin College of Education in Omu. Will the incoming Governor Dapo Abiodun bell the cat? This is the question being asked by workers of the institution where the Provost has not been allowed to work since December. ERNEST NWOKOLO reports.
TAI Solarin College of Education, Omu, Ogun State which first took off at Ijagun, over 30 years ago, was established by the Ogun State government to provide middle-level manpower for primary and secondary schools.
To a great extent, that objective was consistently met when the institution was at its initial location in Ijagun. This is evident in the thousands of seasoned National Certificate of Education (NCE) products it churned out over the years.
However, trouble started when it was upgraded to a full -fledged University of Education in 2005, by the then Gbenga Daniel administration, resulting in the NCE and B.Ed programmes being run simultaneously. The University of Education arm soon became the darling of everybody following better government funding and soaring students patronage. But the fortunes of the College of Education (COE) dwindled as it was starved of funds.
In 2008, the crisis appeared to have momentarily subsided when Daniel relocated the COE arm of TASUED to Omu town to stand alone. The problem resurfaced a few years later and degenerated into the major crisis it is today.
This year, little progress has been made with the academic calendar. Since January, there has been a battle between the college management and workers over salary arrears and underfunding, such that both parties are alleging threats against their lives.
The crisis threatens the little progress recorded with the granting of approval to the college by the National Universities Commission (NUC) to commence award of Bachelor of Science Degree in Education in affiliation with the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago – Iwoye.
The fate of over 3,000 students is in limbo as they face frustration over the waste of valuable time and resources and stand the risk of losing a whole academic session due to the on – going work to rule action embarked upon by the TASCE workers under the aegis of Coalition of TASCE Staff (COTAS) led by Comrade Daniel Aborisade.
The Nation gathered that new students for the degree and National Certificate of Education (NCE) programmes have not had orientation and matriculation for the 2018/2019 academic session, months after resumption, due to the crisis.
Also, the NCE II and III students have not written the first semester examinations – an indication that they may spend an extra year, if the crisis persists.
One of the NCE III students, Miss Funmi Adebola, told this reporter that the college was toying with students’ future with no solution in sight.
She claimed that underfunding of the college by the state government was at the root of the matter.
Speaking on the matter, the college’s Public Relations Officer, Mrs Fisayo Olajide, said the strike by COTAS has continued despite all entreaties from Ogun State House of Assembly Speaker, Suraj Adekunbi, the House Committee on Education and even the Governor-elect, as the Aborisade-led Coalition has remained adamant.
She said many well-meaning individuals, including Speaker of the Ogun State House of Assembly, Adekunbi Suraj, members of the House Committee on Education and the Governor-elect, Prince Dapo Abiodun had all intervened to resolve the issue but to no avail.
The crisis has spiraled into confrontations between the workers and the Provost, Dr Lukmon Adeola Kiadese.
Checks by The Nation revealed that as of this week, the workers were being owed 78 months’ salary arrears totalling N4.7 billion. Part of the arrears, however, predates the current administration.
Workers said about 49 employees of the college have died due to lack of money to feed properly and seek prompt medical attention, which many workers said could have been avoided if they were paid.
Kiadese had to bear the brunt of the workers’ anger. But he said the college had no funds to defray such huge salary arrears, pledging to settle it gradually as resources improve. However, the workers, weary of such promises, ordered him and Bursar to relocate to the Oke – Mosan Governor’s Office, since last December, never to return to Omu until Governor Ibikunle Amosun answered them.
Nevertheless, that has paled compared to what has happened on campus this month. Workers’ protests have featured, barricading all access gates to the school, and allegedly lacing the premises with fetish concoctions, ostensibly to scare the Provost away.
Last week, the workers conducted funeral wake for the Provost.They fried bean cake, locally called akara, and burnt his portrait and pictures in front of the college.
The workers, under COTAS, are calling for the termination of his appointment, accusing him of embezzling the college’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and spending it on frivolities.
They also reported him to anti – graft agencies, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and Code of Conduct Bureau, demanding a probe into the management of the college’s IGR under his watch.
The workers also erected a three-foot wall to barricade the office of the Provost and barred him from further entry to his office, even as they used heavy chain and lock to padlock the school gate; preventing the management, staff and students from gaining access.
Kiadese was not silent. But his reaction was adjudged brutal by the angry workers. They were assaulted by soldiers who stormed the school to break the protest allegedly on the Provost’s orders.
Defending himself, Kiadese said the action of the aggrieved workers constituted grave threat and embarrassment to him and ran foul of Dapo Abiodun’s plea for peace on the campus.
“Despite the fact that Governor-elect, Prince Dapo Abiodun, had pleaded with those illegal unions, led by Aborisade, they remained hell bent on destroying the image and academic pursuit of the college. Is that not lawlessness on their side to kick against what the governor-elect said? I can say it boldly that I am not the one owing them; it is the government. They should go to Oke-Mosan and be doing all these there, not in the campus of learning,” Kiadese said.
Kiadese also told The Nation that the allegation of embezzlement of the school’s IGR was false, stressing that he expended N111m of IGR to settle workers’ salary, carried out developmental projects and financed the first accreditation of programmes, among others.
He said: “The allegation of using the IGR of the college to do Father Christmas is baseless and malicious. The IGR of the college has been expended to pay part of arrears of salary of staff. About N111 million has been paid from the IGR of the college to the staff.
“The IGR of the college was also expended to finance the first accreditation exercise in the college. The college has full accreditation status in all her 27 academic programmes from the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE).
“The IGR was used to finance Degree Assessment resource in affiliation with Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago iwoye. The college has been granted approval to run Degree programme by the National Universities Commission.
“The IGR was also used to augment the payment of 100 per cent staff salary in January, February and March 2019. In addition to the payment of salary arrears, the IGR was used to reposition and turn around the fortunes of the college in the last two years. The college has been rated as the seventh best College of Education in Nigeria.”
The Provost also said the IGR was used to finance the first public lecture of the college, relocate the administrative and academic hub to the permanent site as well as open the college main gate and network of roads.
To address the crisis, Kiadese called on COTAS executive to give peace a chance and allow normalcy to return to the institution.
He lamented that the activities of COTAS had adversely affected the smooth take-off of the degree programmes, and worried that the college could lose an academic session to the protracted crisis.
But COTAS Chairman, who listed the workers’ demand to include payment of 54 months salaries, composition of a governing council, implementation of promotion with effect from 2015 and payment of eight years’ pension arrears, recall of union leaders and remittance of cooperative deductions, said they would not relent on their work to rule stance until their demands were met.
He accused the Provost of inviting soldiers to unleash terror on them, lamenting that some of his colleagues were wounded and hospitalised following the attack.
He also dismissed the allegation by the Provost that members of COTAS were threatening his life, and challenged him to produce evidence of such threat.
“We are not a threat to his life. It is far from the truth. Ask him to present empirical evidence or better still drag us to police/ court if he is sure of the allegation. He is just trying to give dog a bad name just to hang it.
“We should rather accuse him of killing 49 of us due to non-payment of 54 months’ salaries to us and turning most of us into moving corpses.
“We accused him of embezzling close to N400million of our IGR. He has been reported to EFCC, ICPC and Code of Conduct Bureau.
“He and the Bursar have been asked to relocate their offices to governor’s office since December 2018 to get us our 54 months’ salaries which he has not been able to do hence our insistence not allowing him back on campus.
“He brought soldiers to unleash terror on us last Monday (penultimate week). Seven of our members were wounded; they stripped some of our women; our cars damaged while 17 gun shots were fired by the soldiers. He is sending cultists after us.”
Aborisade also said the workers did not want the Provost anymore, referring to him as Amosun’s appointee.
“We asked the governor to remove him as he is not qualified ab initio, he has been rejected by majority of us. He spends our IGR prodigally; we are all out to make peace in the college. The college belongs to us; he is just an appointee of the governor; he is not part of us.
“As we speak, we are being owed 30 months salaries and 48 months salaries arrears culminating into the sum of N4.7 billion as fund needed to defray our salaries.
“We are on work to rule in the last three weeks to further press home our demands. The provost is less concerned with our welfare, since November 2018 that we have started this struggle, he has not been able to mobilise funds from the state government and our IGR to pay part of our salaries and arrears,” Aborisade said.
The COTAS chair also accused the Provost of not being truthful, recalling that when the Secretary to the Ogun State Government (SSG), Taiwo Adeoluwa, claimed the government was not owing TASCE workers and he was asked to respond to the claim, Kiadese declined comments.
Aborisade hopes the new Government coming into power would right all wrongs.
“We are optimistic that the incoming government will be able to address our demands. Every government ought to be proactive and responsive to workers’ plights and since that is not the case with the present government, we are hopeful that the next one will be progressive and listen to workers. If it does not, it will also be fire for fire,” he said.
In less than a week, Governor Ibikunle Amosun will leave office. The lingering crisis may perhaps become the first litmus test on the competence of the incoming government. How Dapo Abiodun will resolve the many challenges in the state’s education sector is yet to be seen.