▪︎As action causes paucity of funds; paralyses administration in NASS
▪︎Workers’ morale goes low; management contends with threat of strike
▪︎CNA makes his moves, sets up a nine-man committee
There is disquiet in the bureaucratic wing of the National Assembly as the Clerk, Architect Ojo Olatunde Amos, has reportedly mismanaged appropriated funds in alleged frivolous and questionable spending to service some vested interests and promote personal agenda.
The development has, as learnt, culminated in the inability of the management under the Clerk to the National Assembly (CNA) to take care of statutory obligations like workers’ welfare issues and other administrative commitments.
Consequently, workers, under the aegis of Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria, PASAN, had threatened to shut down the National Assembly beginning from Tuesday, last week.
But in a quick move to forestall the shutting down of the Federal Legislature, the Clerk to the National Assembly, CNA, had constituted a nine-member implementation committee to resolve workers’ demands in order to stop the proposed strike.
The nine-member committee is chaired by the Secretary, Human Resources and Staff Development, Elder Felix Orunwese.
The setting up of the committee was sequel to a 21-day ultimatum by PASAN, which threatened to embark on strike if their demands were not met.
While inaugurating the Committee, Olatunde said that the management would continue to make staff members’ conditions of service and welfare a matter of priority.
It was learnt that the workers had been pushed to the wall and their morale had gone to the lowest ebb following the alleged insensitive attitude of the incumbent CNA.
There were indications that the CNA got enmeshed in his present predicament that has had negative implications for staff welfare due to his desperation to be confirmed as substantive CNA in a record time.
He was alleged to have opened the coffers of the NASS management in service of some vested interests in the leaderships of the Senate, House of Representatives and the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC).
A source close to the development told this medium that “the CNA has been settling, on monthly basis, every member of the NASC. He has also committed himself to monthly settlement of some presiding officers of the Senate and the House of Representatives from the fund of the NASS management.”
He was confirmed as substantive CNA within two months of his acting in the office, a development which was considered curious and rare. The minimum his predecessors had acted before confirmation by the NASC had been six months.
As part of his desperation to secure and retain the support of the NASC, the CNA reportedly embarked on a recent sponsorship of members of the Commission on an all-expense paid trip to Dubai for a purported retreat.
There were also claims that he is embarking on projects that are not beneficial to the NASS management, through which millions of naira are being misappropriated.
It was learnt that in December 2020, he awarded a huge contract without the necessary paper works. Moves are said to be on to perfect the paper works months after the award of the contract.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission are said to be interested in the financial dealings in the NASS involving the CNA.
An unconfirmed piece of information had it that the CNA had honoured invitations by the anti-graft agencies on a number of occasions in recent times.
Furthermore, the CNA is said not to be in the good books of a vast majority of the workers as well as top management staff members.
He allegedly employs divide-and-rule system among the top management staff members.
He is said to relate more closely with the Secretaries superintending the ten directorates in the NASS bureaucracy at the expense of the directors.
A source said that he recently procured and distributed Toyota Prado Landcruiser Jeeps to each of the ten secretaries. A Toyota Hilux truck was also given to each of them. But the directors were not accommodated in the plan.
According to the source: “Meanwhile, the CNA has not paid the minimum wage for workers. There are no drugs in the National Assembly Clinic. No department is working. The entire bureaucratic wing of the National Assembly has been grounded. He has also not paid any of the contractors that worked for the NASS before he stepped in as the CNA. But he is paying the new contractors who were awarded contracts under his leadership.”
The source disclosed that it was on the basis of these issues, especially the poor welfare of workers, that PASAN is angry with him.
The workers’ association had threatened a fight-to-the finish with the CNA, which was to begin with an indefinite strike that would have shut down the National Assembly last week and disrupted legislative business.
But, the CNA, as reported, succeeded in temporarily halting the proposed strike with his invitation to PASAN to negotiate. The negotiations are ongoing.
However, the success of the negotiation will depend on how much ground the CNA will be ready to concede with regard to PASAN’s list of workers’ welfare demands, as well as how far he is ready to go to redress the sticky issues that had been at the root of the no-love lost relationship with the NASS workers.
