There was commotion on Monday, as the former Minister of State for Labour and Employment Festus Keyamo, began his screening session at the Nigerian Senate, resulting in the suspension of the process.
Keyamo was the final nominee of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to appear before the upper chamber, but his screening took a contentious turn, leading to a rowdy session.
The trouble started after Keyamo’s presentation when Senator Darlington Nwokocha moved a motion to have him stepped down.
Nwokocha accused Keyamo of failing to appear before the 9th National Assembly in 2020 to answer questions about the employment scheme involving the recruitment of 774,000 Nigerians for the Special Public Works (SPW) program.
Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe seconded the motion, and Senate President Godswill Akpabio put the question to the senators.
The motion was based on accusations that Keyamo ignored parliamentary summons and had accused the National Assembly of corruption, allegedly wanting to control the disbursement of N52 billion.
The Senators engaged in a heated exchange of words with Keyamo, who accused them of blackmailing him. After considerable effort, Akpabio managed to restore order and called for a closed session, suspending Keyamo’s screening.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) recalls that the SPW program, coordinated by the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), was aimed at alleviating the impact of COVID-19 on citizens by creating jobs for 774,000 Nigerians.
The program targeted the recruitment of 1,000 citizens from each Local Government Area across the country.
However, in June 2020, the lawmakers accused Keyamo, the then coordinator of the programme of attempting to sabotage the program and designated the NDE as the implementing agency.
One of the main contentious issues was the allocation of job slots to political officeholders.
Keyamo had announced that about 10 per cent of the slots would be allocated to politicians, but this decision was met with resistance from lawmakers who argued that the minister should not control the disbursement of employment slots.
Furthermore, lawmakers passed a resolution directing the Ministry of Finance to release the funds for the program directly to the NDE, warning the Ministry against releasing the funds if it would breach the due process, Appropriation Act 2020 (As Amended), as well as the NDE Act.
Keyamo had emphatically stated that the program achieved all its set goals and dismissed the accusations of corruption and mismanagement.
As Minister, Keyamo pointed out that the beneficiaries of the program are Nigerian citizens who had genuinely benefited from the employment opportunities created.
“There was no corruption at all…The people who were chosen are Nigerians too, they’re not from moon, and they are not from Cameroon,” he said during the controversy in 2020.