REQUEST FOR THE REDEPLOYMENT OF THE PERMANENT SECRETARY FEDERAL MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, GOKE ADEGOROYE Ph.D FROM THE EDUCATION MINISTRY

            The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria presents its compliments to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and wishes to invite the attention of the SGF to the decision of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the Association which took place in Ibadan on 27^th November, 2007 in which it was resolved that all officers on GL 07 and above in Nigeria have demanded for the redeployment of Goke Adegoroye, PhD, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education to a place where he will work with superiors and no subordinate except a secretary or in the alternative to a College of Education but not higher than a Polytechnic where he should be a teacher.

2.         It will be recalled that ever since Goke Adegoroye Ph.D was posted to the Education Ministry as Permanent Secretary, he has constituted himself into a big obstacle in the way of meaningful growth and development of the Ministry.  The problems in the ministry have therefore kept on mounting by the day and he is not bothered.  He keeps on boasting aloud that he was sent to the Education Ministry to accomplish a mandate of scrapping the Unity Colleges and that the accomplishment of that mandate is all he cares about.  Consequently, the avalanche of industrial relations related issues facing workers in the Ministry have been relegated to the background thereby resulting in mass discontent among the workers.  The tension in the Ministry and the Unity Colleges is now very high and the general chorus being made and which we believe is the only panacea to calming down all frayed nerves is the urgent redeployment of Goke Adegoroye Ph.D from the Ministry.

3.         It is necessary to inform the SGF that since 1948 when the Whitley Council I (now National Public Service Negotiating Council I) was created, this is the first time that this Association will be demanding the redeployment of an Officer. This goes to show how serious we view the issue at stake.  We make bold to say that Goke Adegoroye’s retention in the Ministry has the potential of creating frequent and protracted industrial crisis in addition to endangering the educational future of the youths of this country.

 4.        The reasons behind our patriotic call for the redeployment of Goke Adegoroye Ph.D include the following:-

(a)        Goke Adegoroye Ph.D is extremely arrogant and throws caution to the winds when making comments on very sensitive issues and besides, he has a morbid hatred for workers.  This is clearly exhibited in his method of dealing with his subordinates whom he treats and addressed like slaves.  He carries his Ph.D degree to a ridiculous level that he describes anybody in sight as illiterate who is not fit for retention in the civil service.  We are of the view that Goke Adegoroye Ph.D is wrongly advising the Federal Government on education matters and his poor advise had led to thousands of innocent children who should have resumed junior secondary classes turning to hawking and touting and other social vices which may end up truncating their destiny. 

(b)        During the last Federal Administration, Goke Adegoroye Ph.D who is schooled in the art of chicanery and understood that the system extolled sycophancy, mediocrity and posturing worked his ways into the hearts of the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, who appointed him Director-General, Bureau for Public Service Reforms.  The incompetence of Goke Adegoroye Ph.D manifested itself clearly at the Bureau as a sore thumb through his ill-digested reforms in the Public Service when he prescribed his infamous snake-like 16 points generic guidelines for retrenchment in the Public Service but which the Trade Union Side resisted and fought very hard before they were reduced to eight points.  It is on record that Goke Adegoroye Ph.D proceeded to ensure that thousands of public servants including exceptionally brilliant officers were sent on premature retirement.  Goke Adegoroye Ph.D subsequently persuaded the Presidency to release billions of naira from the public treasury with which “training” arrangements of retirees was conducted.  As we write, thousands of public servants who were thrown into the over-saturated labour market and learnt next to nothing at the “trainings” are yet to receive their terminal benefits while a good number of them have died waiting for the illusory entitlements. Beyond all that and to demonstrate that Goke Adegoroye Ph.D lacks intellectual dept in spite of announcing to all and sundry that he is a Ph.D holder, his reforms in collaboration with Mallam El Rufai in the public service which almost crippled the entire public service has already been reversed by the present Administration which has recalled some of the workers in the public service that Goke Adegoroye Ph.D had earlier retrenched.

(c)        Since he moved into the Federal Ministry of Education, Goke Adegoroye Ph.D, given his negative personality, has embarked on another ill-conceived plan to destroy secondary education in Nigeria by unilaterally deciding that there will be no admission into Junior Secondary Schools in the 104 Federal Government Colleges after making thousands of parents to spend millions of naira for their children and wards to sit for entrance examinations and oral interviews.  Right now, Goke Adegoroye Ph.D is creating the impression in the media that parents would be refunded the money they paid for the examinations.  It should be clear that this is an ill-motivated strategy by Goke Adegoroye Ph.D to lead the unsuspecting Federal Government into releasing millions of naira for the purported refund but which we all know will not be properly utilised.   Sir, you will agree with us that the introduction of the 9-year Universal Basic Education policy is not intended to cause confusion in the secondary school education system in Nigeria.  That is why, in the other Federal Government Secondary Schools in the Army, Navy, Airforce and the Police, admissions into Junior Secondary Classes have continued.  Besides, no provision has yet been made for Basic 7, 8 and 9 in the primary school system since this will require the building of more classrooms and buying of more equipment and training/employment of more personnel.

(d)       As if all these were not enough, Goke Adegoroye Ph.D embarked on mass transfer of over 3,000 Education Officers in the Unity Colleges posting them to the creeks and remote villages where some of them have been rejected because Goke Adegoroye Ph.D did not even know that a survey had to be carried out to first determine where Teachers were needed in the school system. These Teachers were transferred on short notice without being paid their entitled allowances in gross violation of the Public Service Rules.  Yet, Goke Adegoroye Ph.D who has travelled outside the country more than once within one month collected his estacodes and other allowances upfront. We wonder how he would have been able to make those journeys if he was denied his estacode.

(e)        In addition to all these, Officers on grade levels 14 and above from the Federal Ministry of Education who went for promotion interview in Abuja were denied the opportunity to do so because Goke Adegoroye Ph.D did not know that briefs and declaration of vacancies were necessary requirements for such an exercise.  At the end, only Federal Ministry of Education Officers out of all the Federal Ministries that presented candidates were denied the opportunity to sit for the promotion interview thereby leading to a situation where those concerned will stagnate in their current positions while others below them in ranks will also not advance because of the intransigence of one man who claims to have a monopoly of knowledge.  The affected Officers will now be made to loose their seniority to their colleagues in other ministries.

(f)         Sir, if you ever try to sound out the colleagues of Adegoroye and the entire staff of the Federal Ministry of Education, you will be shocked that they are all tired of his egocentrism and want him excised from the system because he has become an obstacle to the smooth operations of the Ministry in particular and the Federal Civil Service in general.   We whole-heartedly support this position and demand that Goke Adegoroye Ph.D should be posted to another establishment where he would be made to work only with his superiors but no subordinates except perhaps a Secretary.  Alternatively, he may be posted to any College of Education but not higher than a Polytechnic to lecture.

(g)        You may also wish to know that since the salaries of Political Office Holders, Judicial Officers and Permanent Secretaries have been substantially increased, Goke Adegoroye Ph.D has been snobbing Directors and other top officials boasting that with his new salaries he can pay hundreds of them.  He equally adds that Civil Servants do not merit any salary increase because most of them are unproductive and more importantly, the economy cannot absorb any salary increase now.  As a result of his emotional outburst, the entire civil servants on GL 07 and above nation-wide will not want to have anything to do with him.

5.         In view of the forgoing, we wish to invite the SGF to note that:-

(i)                  Goke Adegoroye’s ill-digested Reforms in the public service as the Director-General, Bureau for Public Service Reforms, created a lot of confusion and disruption which the present Federal Administration is still trying to rectify.

(ii)                At the Federal Ministry of Education, Goke Adegoroye Ph.D has started another ill-conceived policy to destroy the Unity Schools set up by the founding fathers as centres for nourishing national unity and models for secondary education in the country.

(iii)               Goke Adegoroye’s self-conceitedness and contempt for his colleagues and other civil servants are injurious to the collective efforts to reposition the civil service including the education sector to meet the yearnings of Nigerians in this 21^st century.

6.         The SGF is therefore requested to, in the interest of industrial peace and harmony in the Federal Ministry of Education in particular and the entire Federal Civil Service in general:

(a)                Transfer Goke Adegoroye Ph.D from the Federal Ministry of Education before he destroys the entire education system in Nigeria.

(b)               Ensure that Goke Adegoroye Ph.D is posted to a place where he will have superiors but no subordinates except a Secretary.

7.         The Association as a responsible organisation believes and very strongly too that the essence of good education is to ensure that those who possess it exude humility, add value to the society and make the world a better place to live in than they met it, while those with bad education like Goke Adegoroye PhD ooz sadism, turning the environment into a theatre of misery and using their fellow human beings as pawns to massage their insatiable greed and ego. The Federal Ministry of Education and indeed the entire country is not a place for the latter.  Goke Adegoroye PhD is a square peg in a round hole in the Federal Ministry of Education and because he did not go through the mills in the Federal Civil Service, he is a misfit.

8.         Please treat as urgent and acknowledge receipt.

Yours faithfully,

Solomon A. Onaghinon Esq.

Secretary-General