General Review Point

According to leadership, Oyegun an address to journalists at the APC secretariat in Abuja said his recent absence from work was nothing unusual, noting that it was due to malaria.  He said after serving as party chairman for two years he was embarking on a break after the rigours of building the party and a very intense period putting government together up to

The Federal Government has categorically stated it cannot afford to pay indolent Nigerians the N5,000 stipend promised to the unemployed, revealing that it will review the scheme to ensure that beneficiaries use the money for productive purposes.

Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, disclosed this when he spoke with newsmen at the All Progressives Congress (APC) secretariat in Abuja. He said while some people will get N5,000 under cash conversion scheme, some will get N10,000 while others may get more than N15,000 in training.


Ngige further explained that some beneficiaries would go through different training programmes before getting employed by either the state or Federal Government.

“We also have the programme on the commission cash transfer. Though, even you, the media, have said it, we won’t pay N5,000 for people to be indolent. No country in the world would pay people to go home and sleep and collect cash, so, Nigeria won’t be an exception.

“We will pay some people N5,000, pay some N10,000, and even for people in teacher conversion scheme, we will pay more than N10,000, N15,000 as stipend while in training and, then, after the training, they are going to be employed by state governments and the Federal Government in different institutions.

“It is not a programme we shall run alone, the state governments are going to buy into it; they are going to synchronise with us. We are going to do it in synergy,” he explained.
Emphasising that the present administration had some poverty alleviating and employment generating programmes, the former Senator added that the programmes would span through many ministries.

“The programmes will span through ministries of Education, Agriculture, Labour and Agriculture, because we have some agricultural universities and we plan to convert some people to teach the relevant agricultural science,” he note
On the President Muhammadu Buhari skills acquisition scheme, Ngige said: “The ministry has specialist skills acquisition centres; we have seven like that based in the ministry under the commissioner of skills or directorate for skills…”
During the campaign, the APC promised a welfare scheme where unemployed graduates will be paid N5,000 stipend each.

Late last year, attempts by the Senate caucus of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to raise the issue was scuttled by the APC caucus.
“The NDE have over 120 centres scattered all over the country, we also have those that have been built by state government and we want to capture all of these into that scheme and then get people to the scheme as bricklayers, POP designers, builders, welders, electronics repairer, mecha-tronic, repair of vehicles, automobile carpentry, painting and fabrication of all sorts.

“We are going to do it, teach people, give them certification, because many people don’t know that Ministry of Labour is the only place that can certify tradesmen. This skill acquisition centres are in grades, we have grade A certification, Grade B, Grade C, D and E Certification, they all still exist.
“So, we want to get back our youths, capture them, teach them to use their hands, and when they used their hands, they can earn money by employing themselves. If you get a bricklayer or a painter today, you cannot pay less than N5000 for a daily job.
“If somebody is able to work 20 days in a month for N5000, he already has N100,000. But, today is a sad story, that is why Togolese, Ghanaians, citizens of Benin Republic, Niger Republic do all these skilled job for us. 80 per cent of workers in that specialize category in construction site all over Nigeria, be it in Abuja, in Lagos or in Onitsha, come from outside.

“We don’t know that little drops of water form ocean, the money or the naira they are paid is repatriated to their country and all of them will come at the end of the day to put pressure on naira in the foreign exchange market.

“So, we have decided that we have to train our own youths, let them use their hands to fend for themselves. We will also want to advance some of them into entrepreneurship. If you are very good, we can open a place for you and give you money through the Bank of Industry and SMEDAN and then you move to the next stage where a number of youths will work with you,” he explained.

President Muhammadu Buhari has written to the Nationally Assembly to formally request the withdrawal of the 2016 Appropriation Bill he had presented to a joint session of the federal legislature on December 22 for adjustment, according to reporter. The president’s leader was addressed to Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara. The formal request followed controversy over the alleged secret extraction and doctoring of the original budget document.
The controversy over the budget had raged all through last week, as the National Assembly resumed after a recess and the legislators prepared to begin deliberation on the budget. It emerged that the budget saga, which became the source of an ever-growing confusion, arose from Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters, Senator Ita Enang’s alleged adoption of a sneaky approach in the pursuit of an otherwise legitimate objective. It was gathered that Buhari had discovered after presenting the 2016 budget to the National Assembly that some of the figures proposed for operations in the Presidency and the State House were being publicly criticised as outrageous and higher than those of his predecessor, former President Goodluck Jonathan. Given Buhari’s austere nature and the change agenda of his party, the figures for the subheads in the budget for the office of the president, vice president, and a few ministries, which went viral on the social media and had become a major topic of discussion on both the print and broadcast media, were a huge embarrassment.

 To reflect the public mood, the president was said to have directed the recall of the 2016 budget from the National Assembly for review. Ordinarily, the review process should have entailed a written request from the president to the National Assembly calling for the withdrawal of the budget. But Enang, allegedly, embarked on a surreptitious process of changing the budget figures, which went awry. The senate had at its plenary on Thursday accused Enang of doctoring the contents of the 2016 Appropriation Bill presented to the National Assembly by Buhari. “What he distributed is different from what was presented by Mr. President and we have resolved not to address any version until we receive the version presented by Mr. President,” Saraki announced to the senators after an executive session that dwelled on a strange confusion about the substitution of the budget, which had raged since Monday. Enang’s indictment followed an investigation by the ethics and privileges committee of the senate.

 We Are Not Interested – IPOB reporters checks revealed that when Enang wanted to swap the original document, he attempted to reach the Clerk of the Appropriation Committee by telephone but could not get through. He then decided to call the Acting Clerk of the National Assembly, Mr. Nelson Ayewoh, and told him how he had attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to reach the appropriation clerk to collect a document from him. Ayewoh, it was learnt, accepted to call the appropriation committee clerk and ask him to call Enang, but without knowing that the communication was in connection with the budget document. Ayewoh was said to have told the investigating committee that he did not know what Enang wanted to discuss with the appropriation clerk but only showed him respect by drawing the clerk’s attention to Enang’s call.

 However, reporter was reliably informed that when Enang appeared before the committee, he denied communicating with both Ayewoh and the appropriation clerk over the budget. He also allegedly said he never had their numbers. Efforts to reach Enang for his reaction to the budget controversy did not succeed. He appears to have decided to reserve his comment on the matter. In the heat of the controversy last week, Enang was quoted as saying, “I do not want to comment on the matter at the moment. It is a very sensitive matter involving two of my bosses – the National Assembly and Presidency. I don’t want to talk about them.” Also yesterday, the Senate and former Interim National Chairman of APC, Chief Bisi Akande, exchanged diatribes over controversy surrounding the 2016 budget.

Apparently unaware that the President had written the National Assembly on the budget controversy, Akande, in a chat with newsmen in his Ila country home as part of activities marking his 77th birthday, said the claim of missing 2016 budget from the upper legislative chamber was the furtherance of the indiscipline that produced its leadership. Frederick Leonard The former interim national chairman of APC also said that the APC still did not believe in the composition of the upper legislative body. He said: “When I first read in the newspapers that budget was missing in Abuja, you know I live in Ila and I don’t have all the details of what goes on in Abuja. I called the lawmaker representing my constituency and he told me that the budget presented to the House of Representatives was not missing. That showed some complications. “The whole thing is borne out of indiscipline. You know when foundation of an assembly is indiscipline, the whole thing is bad. That assembly was not constituted the way my party wanted it. The process was hijacked and the leadership was constituted the way it is.

 “So from such an assembly, you should expect all kinds of stories. The development regarding the missing budget may be caused by mishandling by people, who are not supposed to be in position. Mr. President should not be blamed for what is happening “Come to think of it, how can a document as voluminous as the budget of a whole nation go missing? With my experience in government, just a ministry may have up to 10 pages or up to 100 pages. Imagine you have 30 ministries, that means you will have a documents of 30,000. How on earth will such a large document get missing?” The Senate however deplored the comment by Akande, describing his reaction as another expression of the frustration which accompanied his inability

 “to impose his lackeys on the Senate as leaders.” In a statement last night, the Senate said it was regrettable that a man of Akande’s status could respond to speculations without cross-checking his facts, alleging that the former governor was always eager to exploit any available opportunity to bring into disrepute the leadership of the Senate because his candidates lost out in the power game. According to the statement signed by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Media, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the parliament said if only Akande had chosen to check his record properly, he would see that “at no time did the Senate say the 2016 budget was missing.” He said the Senate had insisted through several official statements and press interviews by its principal officers that the budget was not missing but two different versions of the budget were seen by senators.

 Nothing wrong with that “We have said it several times that the budget was not missing; that two versions of the details of the budget exist and this is no longer in doubt as the Presidency has equally admitted this. We expect a man of Akande’s calibre to cross-check his facts and take us up on our words. That he decided to ignore the facts and make comments on speculations is regrettable. He is a man who had served in government. He is a leader of the party with the majority in the Senate and he has several channels of cross-checking facts as against speculations,” the statement stated. The Senate further said contrary to the description of what happened as indiscipline on the part of the leadership, the position of Senate leadership is a demonstration of the regime of openness, transparency and accountability which he said had become the hallmark of the current upper legislative chamber. It added: “Chief Akande is still sulking after his group’s failed attempt to impose certain individuals as the leaders of the Senate last year.

 So, he was in a hurry to condemn the leadership. We want him to know that the leadership of the Senate can only emerge through the provisions of the constitution and the standing rules of the institution. As a democrat, Akande should know that once the majority has elected the leadership, all parties to the contest ought to accept the decision. “To continue belly-aching and working to undermine the institution because of the failure to get one’s choice candidates elected casts doubts on his democratic credentials. It appears he is only a democrat when he has his way. We advise him to move on and let us help the legislative institution to focus on its agenda to serve the people in line with the much needed change that President Muhammadu Buhari promised the nation.”

The senators of the APC have objected to the motion to ensure the compliance of President Muhammadu Buhari to his campaign promise of offering financial palliatives to unemployed youths in the country.
There was mild drama at the senate on Wednesday, as All Progressives Congress (APC) senators and those of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) squabbled over a motion by Senator Philip Aduda, urging President Muhammadu Buhari to fulfill his party’s promise of paying N5,000 monthly to unemployed Nigerian youths, according to The Cable.


The motion, which was seconded by Godswill Akpabio (senate minority leader), generated hot air, as APC senators shot it down. Aduda’s motion followed an earlier motion‎ on the need to curb unemployment in Nigeria by Bassey Akpan (Akwa Ibom northeast).

Akpan had observed that the rate of job creation in Nigeria was grossly inadequate to keep pace with the expanding working age and labour force population. He said he believed that if the nation’s unemployed youths‎ were effectively engaged in gainful employment, vices such as terrorism, kidnapping and armed robbery would be reduced. ‎

Akpan therefore urged the senate to call on the “federal government and sub-national governments to intensify their effort on employment generation activities in line with their various campaign promises”.

The motion was adopted, but the however adjourned to next Tuesday.