The Senate has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to reconsider and rescind the decision to remove Nasir Argungun as the Director-General, National Directorate for Employment (NDE).
The upper legislative chamber also urged the President to cause an investigation into causes of the alleged frosty relationship between him and the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Kayamo (SAN).
Similarly, it stressed the need to find out the impact on the implementation of the Federal Government’s Special Public Works (SPW) programme on job creation in 774 local government areas of the country.
The resolution followed the adoption of a motion sponsored under Orders 42 and 52 of its rules by Senator Ibrahim Hadejia (APC Jigawa North-East).
Hadejia pointed out that the removal gave room for speculations in some quarters that some unpatriotic people were out to undermine the laudable programme of the federal government.
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Senator Hadejia said the removal was capable of creating needles and avoidable leadership crisis at the NDE at this critical time that the federal government was leveraging on public works programme to address issues of unemployment and youth empowerment in the country.
According to him, it is in the overriding public interest to reconsider and rescind the said Presidential directive on the removal to ensure leadership stability in the agency.
This, he said would aid the smooth implementation of jobs creation, skills acquisition, and the federal government’s SPW programme aimed at benefiting the youths, many of whom were unemployed.
Contributing, Senator Rochas Okorocha, (APC – Imo West) advised the Senate to apply wisdom in handling the matter, given the political and economic situations in the country.
“Let us adopt a non-formal method of resolving these issues and not create more conflicts among arms of governments,” he stressed.
The Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, said his understanding of the motion was that the National Assembly was in support of the NDE programme.
He said the leadership of NDE, under the sacked director-general, had successfully embarked on a pilot implementation of the federal government’s SPW programme in six states.
He stressed the need for solutions to the issue so that the minister and the NDE boss could work together harmoniously, warning that the change in leadership of the agency at the moment could derail the genuine intentions of the programme.
