Senate Takes Action to Enforce Federal Character in NASS Committee

On Wednesday, the Senate insisted that the Federal Character Principle be followed in the hiring of staff in the National Assembly, saying that any other provisions would violate the Constitution.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Federal Character and Intergovernmental Affairs, Senator Allwell Onyesoh (Rivers East), made this declaration during an interactive meeting of the Committee with the Management of the National Assembly Services Committee at the National Assembly Complex, Abuja.
The Senate committee’s meeting with committee leadership was intended to provide senators with an opportunity to learn about nominations to the National Assembly Service Commission and the degree to which the executive chairman has adhered to the principle of federal character.

However, during a briefing for the committee, the chairman of the commission, Eng. Ahmed Amshi, told lawmakers that the Commission has never conducted any recruitment since he took office, noting that the Commission last hired staff in 2018.

He also informed the Commission that the Commission employs 3,000 staff, with the statistical distribution of the number of employees depending on the zones.

According to Amshi, the North Central region has a total of 1,024 employees, which is the largest number; South South has 631, South East 592, North West 564, North East 474 and South West 436.

The chairman of the committee, Senator Allwell Onyesoh, however, directed the NASC chairman to provide the committee with more documents detailing the number of workers from each state and each local government in each zone.

Briefing reporters after the meeting, Onyesoh said: “We asked for further clarification because when you put everything in one bag, it does not give a clear answer to the question.

“To get to the heart of the matter, we asked for further clarification in the form of more documents breaking it down by state and then by local authority, because I have a situation where I have 1,024 employees working in one location out of 3,000 in a given region.

“You will now go home with the feeling that this zone is overrepresented. Then you will be shocked to find out that two or three states in this zone have nothing and one or two states will take everything. That was the reason we asked them to move everything to the states.

“If you have North Central which has 1,024 staff in the National Assembly, divide it into the states: Kogi, Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau, Kwara, Niger. Let us see how those staff were distributed in those states. Then let us go further and look at the states because some states are overcrowded with staff.
“Then when you go to a particular state, you discover that it is owned by several local governments within that state. And that is not the spirit of the Federal Character Rule.

“The essence of the Federal Character Principle is to ensure that people get what they deserve, that they feel a sense of belonging, that the country is there for all of us.

“The idea is to make the sense of justice visible. This is the essence of the federal character, and when it is not respected, the whole essence and purpose of the idea behind it is destroyed.

“That is why we have asked for the documents to continue to be presented all the way to the local government levels. Bringing this down to the LGA will actually be the basis for assessing honesty.

“The Federal Character Principle is a constitutional issue. It was created to ensure unity and justice in the country, so that everyone has a sense of belonging and does not feel cheated.”