The Senate has been advised by a coalition of civil society organizations, including the Foundation for Rights Enforcement, Enlightenment, and Defense, to reject a bill that would prolong the term of office of the National Assembly Clerk, Magaji Sani Tambawal, by less than a year.
There were rumors that the Senate was ceasing to review the ConcSome parliamentary union members are said to have signed a communiqué backing the bill for service extension, according to a document that went viral on Sunday.
The coalition leader, Mohammed Saidu, however, challenged the Clerk and other union members to provide information about their terms of service upon entering the National Assembly bureaucracy. Saidu stated, “This time, we want to put it to the Clerk that he is misleading the 10th Assembly, using a compromised union to pursue his personal ambition of breaching the Federal Republic of Nigeria’s Constitution. It is only the Clerk who thinks that the union has the capacity to regulate its service year. The same Clerk jettisoned the Senate Rule on ranking during the election of the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, instead using the 1999 Constitution, as amended. “
The same Clerk is attempting to deceive the 10th Assembly today by pursuing a constitutionally indefensible lobbying effort against the National Assembly.
“Ask the Clerk: did he not call a meeting of the National Assembly’s management with a 65-year and 40-year agenda?
“Ask the Clerk: Did he not oversee the fictitious congress led by Birma Shaibu Maina, the Permanent Secretary of Human Resources, whose employment records indicate that he was hired on December 11, 1993, and whose birthday is 22 July 1964?
“Ask the Clerk, who is lobbying senators and members of the House of Representatives with gifts in the form of appointed aides? This same Clerk and other permanent secretaries who are penciled for retirement this year joined the union in rejecting the controversial bill in the past. Today, they want to mislead the 10th Assembly to pass a law that is at variance with the Federal Republic of Nigeria’s Constitution” “This man is supposed to proceed on leave this April. What do you expect from such a congress? Ask the Clerk who sponsored the public hearing that was done without any advertisement and on the day the Nigerian Labour Congress NLC went on strike?
Lastly, we demand that the Senate reject this contentious law in conformity with the Council on Establishment’s 45th meeting resolutions, which were made in Bauchi in December 2023.
“Reject completely, for the umpteenth time, the request to review the retirement age of public servants to 40 and 65 years of age with the view that it is not in line with our population dynamics and is contrary to national aspirations of youth development, innovation, and Renewed Hope.”
Follow for more on www.instagram.com/findwhosabi_/