The minister of State for Labour and Productivity, Festus Keyamo, had a brawl with the National Assembly on the ongoing plan to recruit 774,000 unemployed people across the 774 local government councils in the country under the public social workers programme.
The minister was invited by the joint senate committee on labour and productivity to explain the modalities for the recruitment. However, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Labour and Productivity, Godiya Akwashi, accused Keyamo of lopsided appointment of states committee.
While the minister was trying to defend or clear the air on the allegation, the chairman commitee insisted on a closed door session which Keyamo turned down and called for an open one. The joint senate committee directed the minister to apologise for his rudeness which he refused. The altercation angered the senate to postpone the meeting and walk Keyamo out.
Keyamo, while answering questions from journalists, accused the leadership of the National Assembly of trying to hijack the recruitment exercise. Keyamo’s accusation came at a time when the leadership of the senate was under attack on the alleged allocation of 50,000 N-Power slots from the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Disaster Management and Social Development.
There is no gain saying the fact that Keyamo and NASS war of words has opened up the Pandora box on the job racketeering that continues to rock the National Assembly. Since the return of democracy, NASS has been accused of cornering the jobs meant for the common or poor man. Recently, the recruitment exercises in the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and other federal government’s agencies have left so much to be desired. The recruitments which were secretly carried out without advertisement were also hijacked by the senate. Amidst the rising cases of unemployment in the country, coupled with the white collar jobs which are allocated or cornered by our senators, the struggling and frustrated graduates are left to their fate. One must have expected that given the ad-hoc nature of the government social investment programmes, the senators and other top politicians will overlook them and allow the children of the poor to benefit.
Alas, indications have continued to emerge that even the minor jobs meant for our poor jobs seekers are being taken by the greedy senators. What a sad development! Our universities have continued to churn out millions of graduates with the hope that both the formal and informal sectors of the economy will absorb them. These hopes are dashed. Now, the scarce jobs are being chased between the poor job seeker and the senate. In view of this emerging sad trend, there is the need for government to cut out a clear boundary between the National Assembly as an institution for making laws and as a recruitment body.
Ibrahim Mustapha,Pambegua, Kaduna state08169056963.
