The Ministry of Labour, Employment and Productivity on Wednesday turned down the National Assembly’s resolve to remove the Minister of State, Festus Keyamo, from supervising recruitment of 774,000 Nigerians for the Special Public Works programme.
The ministry’s Deputy Director, Press and Public Relations, Mr Charles Akpan told PUNCH “nothing has changed.”
The Senate and the House of Representatives, had at their separate sessions on Tuesday, asked the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to stop Keyamo from supervising the recruitment of 774,000 Nigerians.
But despite the National Assembly’s directive, Keyamo, on July 14, said he had got the approval of the President to supervise the recruitment.
On Tuesday, the National Assembly said the Minister of Labour, Employment and Productivity, Senator Chris Ngige, should supervise the programme.
He said Keyamo erred in law by taking over an assignment which was constitutionally assigned to the NDE through the Revised 2020 Appropriation Act.
But Akpan told The PUNCH that the exercise would be supervised by Keyamo, under whose office the NDE operates.
Akpan stated, “The special works programme is with the NDE, but our ministry is the supervising ministry for NDE and because of that, we monitor their activities and the ministry of labour was given the responsibility to handle that assignment, and it is under the supervision of the minister of state. So, whatever the directorate does, it would report to the minister of state; so nothing has changed.”
Responding to the Ministry of Labour’s statement, the spokesperson for the Senate, Senator Ajibola Basiru, said the position of the red chamber on the 774,000-job recruitment issue had not changed.
