By Ignatius Okorocha
Senate on Thursday at plenary urged President Muhammadu to reconsider and rescind his directive on removal of Dr Nasir Ladan as Director-General, National Directorate for Employment (NDE).
It also urge the President to direct an investigation into causes of the frosty relationship between the sacked director general of NDE and Minister of State for Labour and Employment Festus Kayamo.
It said there was also need to find out the impact of such frosty relationship on the implementation of the Federal Government’s special works programme on job creation in 774 local governments .
Senate’s resolution was hinged on the adoption of a motion by Sen. Ibrahim Hadejia(APC Jigawa).
Hadejia coming under orders 42 and 52 of the Senate rules said it was a concern of Senate over media report on removal of director general general of NDE as announced by the Presidency on Dec 8.
He said there was controversey surrounding the removal of the director general of NDE .
He, however, noted that, it was within the executive powers of the President to appoint and remove any of his appointees.
He, however, said the presidential directive on the removal gave room for speculations in some quarters that some unpatriotic people were out to undermine the laudable program of the federal government.
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 program 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 smooth implementation of job creation, skill acquisition and the federal government special works programme aimed at benefiting the youths, many of whom were unemployed .
Contributing, Sen.Rochas Okorocha, (APC Imo) advised the Senate to apply wisdom in handling the matter given the situations in the country.
“Let us adopt a non formal method of resolving these issue and not create more conflicts among arms of governments.”
President of Senate, Ahmad Lawan in his remarks 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 special public works programme in six states.
According to him was need to find a way of resolving the issue with the minister and the NDE boss for the duo to walk together.
Lawan said change in leadership of the NDE at the moment could derail the genuine intentions of the programme.
