Group Frowns At National Assembly Suspension Of 774,000 Job Recruitment

The group, the United Niger Delta Energy Development Security Strategy (UNDEDSS) has expressed concerned over the National Assembly suspension of the selection process for the innovative public works job creation programme meant to create 774,000 unskilled jobs in the country.

The national assembly comprises of the senate and House of representatives had ordered the discontinuation of the programme following the face-off between the Joint Committee of the National Assembly on Labor-led by Senator Godiya Akwashiki ( APC Nasarawa North) and the Minister for State of Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo.

Kayemo is supervising the programme under the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) in the presidency.

The leadership of the House of Representatives had on Wednesday announced that the programme be put on hold pending proper briefing of the National Assembly by the Minister of Labour and Employment.

But reacting to the development, UNDEDSS, in a statement by its Executive Secretary, Mr. Tony I Uranta, allegedly accused the leadership of the national assembly of “preying on the good people of Nigeria.

The group accused the national assembly for alleged incessantly illegally pad budgets, and deliberately slowing down well-meaning programmes and projects of the Federal Government and its MDAs”.

Uranta, in the statement condemned in a strong term the ongoing brouhaha between the Labour Ministry and the NASS, saying the situation was currently threatening to stifle the well meaning orders of President Buhari.

The programme, UNDEDSS affirmed was designed by the Ministry of Labour to create socio-economic welfare nets reaching directly to the constitutionality recognized 774,000 Local Government Areas of the country and not for lawmakers through their oversight powers use it to enrich themselves.

The group alleged that “The National Assembly NASS is throwing all kinds of spurious spanners in the way of Mr. Buhari’s desire to be perceived as an empathetic leader via deflating the economy, no matter for how long.

UNDEDSS lamented that the same NASS leadership was in same manner “seem hellbent to scuttle the FGN’s extremely vital program designed to get Covid-19 palliatives to the Niger Delta, via the Niger Delta Development Commission NDDC, in these tragic times.

“We see a pattern in the way Keyamo, Akpabio etc are facing campaigns of calumny, which pattern has been in existence since the inception of the largely corrupt 4th Republic”, asserts Mr. Uranta, the NNSG Scribe, “whereby every Ministry, Department and Agency of the FGN has budgets held ransom, until the NASS leadership are allowed to both pad the budgets, and also share out the ‘juicy’ contracts amongst themselves and their proxies!”

Continuing, Uranta contended, “if this National Assembly is allowed to continue brow beating every body, in an obvious attempt to show up Buhari as a toothless anti-corruption chihuahua, the Niger Delta and others may soon resort to self-help”, the statement warned.