By; Magaji Hunkuyi, Jalingo.
A cartel now offers teaching appointment letters to unemployed persons at the cost of N300, 000 per person in Taraba State.
The Executive Secretary Taraba State Primary Education Board, Mr. Yakuba Agbaizu disclosed this during a press briefing in Jalingo, Monday.
He alleged that the cartel with connivance of some staff of the Board are now offering appointment letters to unsuspecting persons in the state and collecting money ranging from N300, 000 and above.
According to him, there are also ghost teachers now in the pay roll of the board and effort was being made to flush them out.
He said there was a primary school in Kona Village where the head teacher claimed to have 17 teaching staff, but during inspection only 3 teachers were met on duty.
The executive secretary further stated that it was later discovered 42 teachers were on the pay roll of that school.
He accused education secretaries and some account staff in the Board of conniving with head teachers of running a cartel and making millions of Naira from ghost teachers.
Mr. Yakubu Agbaizu further disclosed the syndicates have also forged his signature making it difficult to differentiate between fake and genuine appointment letters.
He advised those seeking teaching appointment to stay away from such persons offering employment adding that the board is not recruiting teachers now.
“The activities of the syndicate is frustrating efforts of the board trying to flush out ghost teachers” he said.
Mr Agbaizu disclosed that the syndicate are also running
ghost schools and collecting salaries for such schools.
According to him the syndicate take advantage of difficult terrain of the state to put names of non existing schools in the system of the board
“There are schools whose teacher are in the pay roll of the board but in practical term such schools never exist and the syndicate are taking advantage of difficult terrain of some part of the state to commit such acts.” Mr Agbaizu said.
He said a part from the bio-metric carried out with aimed at flushing out ghost teachers and ghost primary schools the board will soon embarked on physical screening of teachers as well as inspection of all existing schools in the state.