The House of Representatives has resolved to investigate alleged lopsidedness in the recent recruitment by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), and Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).
This resolution was a sequel to a motion moved by Ibrahim Kawu (APC, Kano) on Wednesday during plenary.
NEITI’s recruitment
Daily Trust had on Monday published a report which shows that out of the 70 staff recently recruited by NEITI, 21 are from South-east.
The Executive Secretary of NEITI, Ogbonnaya Orji, had in reaction to the story claimed that the agency got a Federal Character Commission waiver to carry out the recruitment.
“The waiver granted to NEITI by the Federal Character Commission (FCC) was informed by huge volume of applications the agency received in the course of the recruitment exercise,” Mr Orji said.
The motion
In his motion, Mr Kawu said the recent recruitments by the two agencies generated controversy because they did not reflect federal character.
He stated that the recruitments by NEITI and NUPRC violate section 14(3) of the 1999 constitution which mandates government agencies to reflect the federal character principle in the conduct of their affairs to promote national unity.
Section 14(3) of the 1999 constitution provides that “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.”
Consequently, without debate, the House resolved that NEITI and NUPRC should cancel the recruitment if found short of the federal character observance.
Also, the House mandated its Committees on Petroleum Upstream and Federal Character to investigate the matter and report back in three weeks.
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