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The Honourable Minister for State ,Festus Kiyamo has said that the Committee saddled with the responsibility of selection of 774,000 Nigerians for the Federal Government work program should carry on their work .
He made this clearification to newsmen after appearing before the Joint Committee on Labour by both Senate and House of Representatives.
Keyamo threatened to quit rather than support illegality and compromise of the job.
The minister was accused of making the process public even when he was told not to do so.He said,”there was a misunderstanding between us when they questioned why I did not privately submit the program to them for vetting before taking certain steps. They suggested that they ought to have an input on how the programme should be implemented. In other words, they sought to control the programme as to who gets what, where and how.However, I insisted that I could not surrender the programme to their control since their powers under the constitution does not extend to that. They insisted on a closed door session.”
Keyamo said the power of the Committee is limited to investigation not giving directives to the executives.
“A Committee or Committees of both Houses do not even have powers to pass binding Resolutions. They can only make recommendations to Plenary. In this case, even Plenary CANNOT give DIRECTIVES to the Executive.
All my life, I have fought for good governance and constitutional democracy. I will not come into government and be intimidated to abandon those principles. I will rather leave this assignment, if Mr. President so directs than compromise the jobs meant for ordinary Nigerians who have no Godfathers or who are not affiliated to any political party.”