Delta’s Education In Disarray: When Power Struggles Trump Pupils’ Future
WHAT unfolded in Delta State over the weekend was not just a bureaucratic squabble—it was an open power clash at the heart of the state’s education system, and the casualties are neither the Commissioner nor the Chairman, but the teachers and students caught in the middle.
On Saturday 13 September, the Post Primary Education Board (PPEB), under its Executive Chairman, Dr. Emmanuel U. Tibi, released a supplementary posting and transfer list, directing all affected staff to assume duty by Monday. Barely 24 hours later, the Commissioner for Secondary Education, Mrs. Rose Ezewu, issued her own circular, voiding the PPEB’s exercise and ordering staff back to their original posts. Each directive came with threats—disciplinary action from the Commissioner if staff ignored her order, and a warning from the PPEB that its authority could not be undermined.
This is no mere clerical misstep. It is an institutional tug-of-war that raises troubling questions about governance in Delta State. Who truly has the mandate to decide where teachers are posted—the Commissioner’s office or the PPEB? And more importantly, what message does this public display of disunity send to the very people the system is supposed to serve?
At stake here is not just administrative control but the credibility of the state’s education management. Teachers now face the impossible choice of obeying one superior only to risk punishment from another. Principals are being reduced to pawns in a political contest, while classrooms risk being destabilized by the uncertainty of who should be where.
The PPEB argues that it alone holds the statutory authority to post and discipline staff, and in principle, it is correct: that is its core function. But when a Commissioner, the political head of the sector, openly contradicts the Board, the result is chaos. The children of Delta State cannot afford this chaos. Education thrives on order, not on power games played out through dueling circulars.
This crisis is bigger than Dr. Tibi or Mrs. Ezewu. It exposes a deeper rot: the lack of coordination, clarity, and respect for institutional boundaries within the state’s governance structure. If two government organs can publicly flex muscles over teacher transfers, what does that say about the coherence of policy execution in other areas?
The government must resolve this dispute swiftly, decisively, and publicly. The Governor cannot stand aloof while the very foundation of the school system is shaken. Teachers need certainty, principals need direction, and students deserve stability.
What Delta is witnessing is not governance—it is a turf war. And until authority is clarified and order restored, it is the future of Delta’s children that hangs in the balance.
