By Citizenship Daily
The Benue State House Assembly has ordered the Chairman, State Universal Basic Education Board Mrs. Grace Adagba to step aside from her official duties to allow the house investigate the recruitment exercise embarked upon by the board.
The House took the decision at its plenary sitting on Thursday during which the Majority Chief Whip Mr Peter Ipusu representing Katsina-Ala West moved a motion suspending the board Chairman.
Ipusu noted that the house adopted resolutions directing the chairman of the board to suspend the ongoing recruitment of Primary School Teachers to allow for investigation into controversies surrounding the exercise but the directive was ignored.
He stressed that a day after the resolution was duly conveyed, the chairman released a statement indicating that new cut off marks had been allocated to the various local governments based on their performance in the Computer Based Test CT, conducted by the board and subsequently shortlisted additional names for physical screening.
He said that he was worried that the statement released by SUBEB was not only reactionary but disparaging of the honour of the assembly and its resolutions.
The motion was seconded by Mr Alfred Berger, who maintained that the chairman lacked the integrity to continue to pilot the affairs of the board.
Berger added that the law establishing the board gave powers to the Local Government Education Authorities, LGEAs to recruit teachers, emphasizing that the process was decentralized and the department of quality assurance of the board only supervised it.
Meanwhile, the motion was countered by the Majority Leader, Mr Saater Tiseer who said that the chairman should be given fair hearing on the matter.
Tiseer added that the day the chairman was to appear before the house, she was at the assembly by 10am as requested.
He advised his colleagues not to take decisions by prejudice, adding that they should take actions in line with the constitution.
The counter motion was seconded by Anthony Agom (PDP/Okpokwu), stating that the chairman should be allowed to explain herself.
Ruling, the Speaker, Mr Hyacinth Dajo, asked the Clerk, Mr John Hwande, to divide the house and the members who voted in favour of the motion were 21 while five members voted for the counter motion.
Ruling, Dajo stated that the chairman should step aside and hand over to the Permanent Member I to allow the house carry out her investigation..
He further constituted a seven man committee to investigate the exercise and report to the house within seven days.
It should be noted that the same board was indicted by the House Committee on local government of siphoning over 2 billion Naira meant for local government teachers salaries.
