Leadership controversy: Oyo NUT in turmoil as State Govt extends chairman’s tenure

…Gov. Makinde granted extension of service year for NUT chairman — Ex- Secretary reveals

The Oyo State chapter of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) is currently embroiled in a dispute following the state government’s decision to extend the tenure of the union’s Chairman, Mr. Raji Oladimeji.

This move, reportedly authorised by Governor Seyi Makinde, has sparked discontent among certain union members.

Mr. Oladimeji, who was elected last year for a four-year term, was due to retire this May. However, he has been granted a three-year extension to his service, ostensibly to enable him to fulfill his leadership term.

While some senior figures in the union have attempted to mediate the conflict, their efforts have yet to quell the unrest. The dissatisfied faction within the union remains adamant that Mr. Oladimeji should step down from his role as chairman.

It was also reported that the aggrieved members of the union had written petitions and even gone to some radio stations in Ibadan to express their grievances over Oladimeji’s refusal to leave office after the expiration of his service year.

One of the aggrieved teachers, Mr Sulaimon Salaudeen, said the crisis was due to the refusal of the chairman who was to have retired and vacated office as NUT chairman but who was claiming that he had been given an extension of service.

“If at all he has been given an extension of service, does that allow him to continue as the NUT chairman? That is what the teachers are fighting for,” Salaudeen said.

He, however, admitted that some elders of the union had waded in to settle the matter.

The crisis within the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) in Oyo State is being addressed by stakeholders within the union, according to former NUT Secretary in the state, Olu Abiala.

He explained that the extension of service year for the NUT Chairman was not sought by the chairman himself, but was granted by the governor to allow him to continue his work on behalf of the union.

Abiala said that the Chairman had met with the governor to push for a new career structure for teachers in the state, which would extend their length of service.

The extension of service for the chairman was seen as a way to allow him to benefit from the new structure.

Some members of the union were unhappy that the chairman was more concerned with his own extension of service than with that of all members, but Abiala argued that if the chairman had waited for the extension to be implemented for all members, he would have retired before it happened.

“Before accepting the letter extending his service year, the NUT Chairman made consultations with some elders who asked him to accept the offer so that he would be able to complete the struggle he had started.

“If he had rejected the offer, it would amount to an act of ingratitude. “We all should rather commend the governor for doing so. In actual fact, the National Secretariat of NUT had commended the governor for this act of benevolence, as it is rare,” he said.

Abiala, who said that the governor had the prerogative to grant extension of service year to anybody he felt deserved it, cited some civil servants who had also benefited from such a gesture in the past.

Speaking on the development, the NUT chairman, said that the matter was an in-house issue which was being resolved.

Oladimeji stated that the agitation for extension of teachers’ service year was a national issue.

He said that the union had been making efforts to persuade the state government to domesticate the bill signed into law by former President Muhammadu Buhari which extended teachers’ length of service to 40 years and their retirement age to 65. The NUT chairman said that he had decided to exit office but for the intervention of the national leadership of the union which believed in his capacity to ensure the implementation of the act in the state.

He said when his service year was extended, the approval letter was taken to all the stakeholders and organs of the union, adding, however, that the elders had already waded into the matter.

“There is no division in the union. It is a kind of agitation that is expected in any decent society.

“It is not an issue that has split NUT. The union is indivisible. They have listened to our elders and the elders have invited them for a roundtable,” Oladimeji said