Humble educationist from Samburu exits the hot seat at TSC

When Gabriel Lengoiboni exits as the secretary of the Teachers Service Commission on Tuesday he will certainly be a relieved man.

The soft-spoken career administrator has not had it easy during his ten-year tenure at the helm of the giant commission, which caters for more than 280,000 teachers.

He has battled many biting teachers’ strikes as well as litigations by retired and serving teachers and unions.

Lengoiboni has worked in the public service for the last 30 years. He gave an emotional farewell to thousands of secondary school teachers who were attending their annual conference in Mombasa last week.

While working with teachers was part of his joy, it was also part of his headache. “It is time for someone else to continue with the reform agenda we have vigorously pursued together for the last decade,” he said.

March this year perhaps marked one of his most trying moments when the High Court in Nakuru issued a warrant for his arrest for failing to pay retired teachers Sh16.7 billion as pension and salary arrears.

For several weeks, Mr Lengoiboni was one of most wanted high profile individuals in the country, destined to cool his heels at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison for six months for failing to pay the retired teachers.

His legal team would argue that the TSC boss’s hands were tied – that he was more than willing to make the payments but he’d come up against a tardy government bureaucracy that tied up all his efforts in red-tape – but the court was hearing none of it.

Deputy Inspector-General of Police Samuel Arachi was swiftly summoned by the High Court to explain why Mr Lengoiboni was not chewing beans and ugali in Kamiti.

Mr Arachi said the administrator had last been sighted in North Africa but he had issued firm instructions to the Immigration Department to promptly arrest him once he set foot back on Kenyan soil. And to ensure Mr Lengoiboni did not slip through the dragnet, Mr Arachi assured the court that he had also placed additional officers at the airport and at the TSC offices. It appeared like the boss’s goose was well and truly cooked.

But Mr Lengoiboni somehow managed to slip back into the country and carry on with his life. Talk about hiding in plain sight! The court would later give Inspector-General of Police Joseph Boinett 60 days to find his way around his office before he was also supposed to deliver the administrator to the warders on Kamiti Road.

READ: Boinett’s first task: arrest TSC boss over Sh17bn arrears

Despite these challenges, Mr Lengoiboni has maintained a characteristic calm; always pushing for arbitration. It is an indication of the wide experience he picked up as a public administrator for nearly three decades.

Hailing from the rural plains of Samburu where the pastoralist lifestyle has for decades hindered formal education, he opted to remain in the classroom, moving on to attain a First Class Honours degree in Science Education from the University of Nairobi.

His education exploits did not end there; he proceeded to obtain a Master’s of Science in Statistics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Prior to his appointment to the current position on July 22, 2004, Mr Lengoiboni served as Senior Deputy Director of Education in charge of universities at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. He also served as the country’s Education Attaché in India between 1994 and 1999 under the Foreign Affairs ministry.

This wide experience in handling education affairs handed Mr Lengoiboni an upper hand in the race to replace Mr James Ongwae as the TSC secretary.

Insiders at the teachers’ commission credit Mr Lengoiboni with transforming TSC from an agency characterised by favouritism and corruption in sensitive areas such as teacher appointments, promotions and transfers.

Previously, the hiring of teachers was a centralised affair, creating room for malpractices. A new policy has since been put in place that provides for recruitment of teachers at the grassroots. The recruitment and promotion of teachers in Job Groups M and N is now done at the county level.

For a long time, promotions were also a painful affair at TSC, with cartels resorting to spurious methods to reward cronies and relatives.

A lot has, however, changed after new policies were formulated to guide promotions under Mr Lengoiboni’s watch.

Promotions at TSC are today guided by provisions of three schemes of service; for non-graduate teachers, graduate teachers and technical teachers and lecturers. The completion of the TSC House in Nairobi’s Upper Hill area and transfer of operations of the commission can be listed among Mr Lengoiboni’s main achievements.

He is also credited with overseeing the repeal of the TSC Act to conform with provisions of the new Constitution.

But even with these achievements, some critics view Mr Lengoiboni as “too rigid and slow in acting spontaneously’’ to avert crises. At the peak of the numerous teachers’ strikes unionists blamed the TSC boss of failure to act on time to address their grievances leading to disruption of teaching.

As he leaves TSC, Mr Lengoiboni said he would remain actively involved in the improvement of the education sector.

“I am still able and available to serve this great nation in whatever other capacity I am called upon to. I will also be available for advise for you individually or collectively,” he told the teachers’ conference.

Well, there goes a teacher, a servant and a gentleman.