The Osun State Government and the opposition All Progressives Congress in the state have disagreed over the ongoing teachers’ recruitment exercise.

The State Commissioner for Education, Dipo Eluwole, in a statement, said the decision to distribute appointment letters to selected teachers was not borne out of panic.

He explained that the issuance of appointment letters was a policy decision of the State Executive Council taken since last year, and that the government did not act out of fear of any protest.

“The general public should note that this claim is false, speculative, and deliberately misleading.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the issuance of appointment letters is a policy-driven decision that emanated from the State Executive Council meeting held in December 2025, as earlier stated by the Governor. It forms part of a structured, phased implementation plan for teacher recruitment, designed to align with fiscal responsibility, due process, and sustainability of the education workforce.

“At no point did the Osun State Government act under pressure, panic, or threat of protest. The narrative being pushed is an attempt to politicise an administrative process and undermine a well-documented reform agenda in the education sector,” he said.

On the contrary, the APC’s Director of Media and Information, Kola Olabisi, described the process as shoddy, faulting the government for failing to disclose the exact number of teachers it intends to recruit after three years of screening.

He particularly criticised the Commissioner for not stating how many teachers would be appointed to replace the 1,500 teachers sacked by Governor Ademola Adeleke’s Executive Order in November 2022.

His words, “There is nothing suggestive of the genuineness of Governor Adeleke to replace the 1,500 teachers recruited by his predecessor, which he maliciously sacked through vindictiveness by the introduction of the obnoxious Executive Order the second day he assumed office in 2022.

“How on earth would a state commissioner of information come on the air to defend the government policy on the recruitment of teachers without sufficiently arming himself on the number of teachers that his government is set to engage, if not that he was out to spew falsehood and subterfuge?

“How can a government predicate the inability of its administration to hire teachers on its failure to access local government funds when it is an undeniable statement of fact that the Supreme Court has settled the furore that the local government is an independent tier of government?

“It was also disheartening that the Adeleke-led government had not done its homework before it hurriedly announced the readiness of his government to hire the teachers who were examined and interviewed over two years ago, as it would have known the cost-implication of the exercise before it was pushed to the public.

“How else could one ascribe the appellation of kick-and-start on the Osun State Governor Adeleke if not because of a situation at hand concerning his rush to hire the teachers, the number he does not know, in order to counter the resolve of the reinstated APC local government chairmen to reabsorb the 1,500 teachers sacked by the governor in 2022?”