November 21, (THEWILL) – A Pro-democracy Group, Nigerians for Enduring Democracy (NED), has called for both arms of the National Assembly to reject and reverse the appointment of Sani Magaji Tambuwal, as the Acting Clerk of the National Assembly.
NED said, “Tambuwal’s appointment, unilaterally undertaken by the Senate President, Senator Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan, in conspiracy with the Chairman of the National Assembly Service Commission, Engr. Ahmed Kadi Amshi, was fraught with corruption and irregularities and violated due process, as laid down in the National Assembly Service Commission Act, 2014, as amended, in relation to the appointments of legislative clerks and secretaries.
In a statement released in Lagos on Tuesday and signed by its Executive Secretary, Fidelis Osoba, NED demanded the reversing of Tambuwal’s appointment and his replacement by a deserving senior official with legislative background and cognate experience.
Until his appointment on 18th November, Tambuwal served as Secretary of Finance and Accounts.
Moreover, NED noted, the Acting National Assembly Clerk was shunted six steps over his superiors, to occupy his current position, a move the group said was “acrimonious, invidious, unacceptable and barren of common sense and decorum”.
NED said: “How do you subsume everyone on the successor line-up within the nation’s Legislative Service, leapfrog a totally junior official in the pecking order, and catapult him above his highly diligent and experienced seniors? The National Assembly cannot afford to set bad precedents that will rob the Legislature of the moral right to mediate and exercise oversight when such abuses take place in other arms of the country’s administration.”
The group’s Executive Secretary noted that Tambuwal’s appointment was even more curious as the retiring Clerk of the National Assembly, Arc. Ojo Amos Olatunde, had recommended a successor along the line of seniority, experience and competence.
NED noted that “whoever must head the National Assembly Management, must be an experienced legislative officer, who has risen through the ranks in the service. Moreover not only does the National Assembly Clerk serve as the peak of the career for legislative officers, but there are also enough competent officers in the system to prevent the appointment of a neophyte who must now be guided every step of the way.”
The group noted that already, the deficiencies of the new appointee had begun to show, as the retiring Clerk, Ojo, had been instructed not to disengage immediately until February, so as to guide Tambuwal through the processing of the 2023 Appropriation Bill.
NED lamented: “This demand that the outgoing NA Clerk should hang around to babysit Tambuwal through the processing of the 2023 budget is unprecedented, laughable and justifies the current call that he should never have been appointed in the first place.
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.
