The Deputy Minority Leader, House of Representative, Rt. Hon. Toby Okechukwu, has said that the term Minister of state for labour and employment is not captured in the Nigerian Constitution.

This he made known while explaining a motion during a plenary section

The motion was duely tagged, “Motion of Urgent public Importance on the need to uphold the National Directorate of Employment, (NDE)  Act in the implementation of the special public works program.”

The Special public works program, was proposed by the executive as a means of granting financial assistance to the masses amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is aimed to house a capacity of 774000 persons, with 1000 individuals coming from the distinct 774 local government areas of Nigeria.

The executive particularly mentioned the National Directorate of Employment(NDE), as the implementing agency, which is subject to the Minister of Labour.

According to Okechukwu, the executive who had introduced the special public works program, should have outrightly named the Minister of state for labour as the implementing agency.

The House also called to question the legality of the office of the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Mr. Festus Keyamo, stating that “by our laws as presently constituted, the NDE is an implementing agency with the Minister of Labour, not Minister of State, an aberration and indeed an entity unknown to the law, is the supervising Minister”.

It, therefore, additionally urged President Muhammadu Buhari to “direct the Minister of Labour recognised by the Constitution and NDE Act, to live up to his lawful responsibility of supervising the NDE, ensuring non-interference and meddlesomeness by any persons in the running of the agency”.

The resolutions were sequel to a motion, “The Need to Uphold the NDE Act In the Implementation of The Special Public Works Programme” sponsored by the Deputy Minority Leader, Hon. Toby Okechukwu and the Chairman, House Committee on Aviation, Hon. Nnoli Nnaji at the House plenary on Tuesday.

“The term ‘Minister of State’ is not a creation of Section 145 (1) of the 1999 Constitution, and may therefore be the reason for the refusal of the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Mr. Festus Keyamo, to be guided and his assertion that only Mr. President can stop his work, instead of deferring to our laws and institutions”, Okechukwu, who represents Aninri/Awgu/OjI River Federal Constituency, Enugu State, stated while presenting the motion.

He argued that Section 2 of the NDE Act clearly vested in the agency the responsibility to design and implement programmes to combat mass unemployment, adding also that “the Appropriation Act 2020, a valid law of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is clear that the NDE is the implementing agency for the Special Public Works (SPW) programme and captured it as: ‘Public Works Programme: 1000 persons per LGA for 36 States and Area Councils of FCT- 774, 000 persons for the sum of N52,000,000,000’”.

He noted that the NDE had been in operation for 33 years and built the professionals and requisite technical staff to implement government policies, including the Special Public Works programme, an initiative on which he informed the House the agency had already conducted a pilot study in eight states.

Highlighting the economic and accountability consequences of the ad hoc committees arrangement proposed by the Minister of  State as opposed to an interventionist agency as the NDE created by law, Okechukwu he called the parliament’s attention to what he described as grave developments at the NDDC.

“The Executive recruited an Interim Management Committee, IMC, instead of inaugurating the NDDC Board as submitted by Mr. President and approved by the Senate and we are all witnesses to the consequences”, he said.

The lawmaker further argued that the supervisory powers conferred on the Minister of Labour by Section 15 of the NDE Act did not condone any abnormalities or allow the Minister to do so without regards to the law and called on the House “to prevent any mischief, wastage of scarce public resources, lack of accountability and defeat of the aims and objectives of the Special Public Works programme”.