Reps suspend FG’s 774,000 Special Public Works Programme

The House of Representatives has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to reconsider his decision on the sacking of Dr Nasiru Ladan as Director General, National Directorate of Employment (NDE).
This was sequel to a unanimous adoption of a motion by Olajide Olatubosun (APC-Oyo) at plenary on Tuesday.
Contributing to the debate, Luke Onofiok (PDP-Akwa Ibom) said that the sack was ill advised.
He said that although Buhari meant well for the nation, his advisers were giving him wrong information.
Onofiok said that the sacked Director-General stood for what was right, blaming his travails on some element opposed to due process.
Moving the motion earlier, Olatubosun said that in October 2019, Buhari approved a Special Public Works Programme for NDE in eight states.
He said that the pilot programme was implemented in Adamawa, Borno, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Jigawa, Katsina and Kwara.
Olatubosun said that the president approved that the NDE employ 774,000 unemployed persons under an expanded Special Public Works Programme in all the 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the country.
The lawmaker said that the National Assembly appropriated N52 billion in 2020 for the Special Public Works Programme out of which each beneficiary will be paid N20,000 per month over a period of three months.
“The Minister of State for Labour inaugurated state selection committee for each state of the federation while the NDE as part of its statutory mandate was responsible for the registration of the beneficiaries.
“The state selection committees in most states bypassed and ignored the list of beneficiaries compiled by NDE and forwarded a separate list of beneficiaries to the office of the Minister of State for Labour.
“Most Nigerians that submitted their names to the NDE offices in their respective states were unjustly excluded from this programme which the Minister of State for Labour announced will start on January 5.
“Worried that if the programme was allowed to go ahead without due process, a bad precedent would have been set for the programme, the House resolved to urge the Minister of State for Labour to stop with immediate effect all processes leading to its commencement on January 5,” he said.
The lawmaker said that until the list of beneficiaries compiled by the NDE in each state was used as a basis of selection, the programme will remain suspended.
Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila mandated Committees on Labour and Productivity and Legislative Compliance to ensure implementation and report back in one week for further legislative actions.