Daily Trust Sunday

[PENPOINT N/Assembly staff tenure ‘elongation’: Matters arising

- With

Like a bad coin that throws itself up at odd times in a pile of coins, so has a particular issue been surfacing sporadical­ly with the likely effect of impugning the career prospects of serving bureaucrat­s in the National Assembly. To wit is the dispensati­on whereby a resolution passed by both chambers of the immediate past Eighth National Assembly, to review the service conditions - in particular the tenure of the bureaucrat­s, is now assuming undeservin­gly, the hue of a careerlow for the Clerk to the National Assembly Mohamed Ataba SaniOmolor­i, long with over a hundred of other officers. Topical among the provisions of the resolution, is a review of the retirement conditions whereby the bureaucrat­s shall by such, retire on the attainment of 40 years of service or 65 years of age, depending on which one comes first. Until the new dispensati­on, the situation was that they retire at 35 years of service and 60 years of age as is applicable to much of the country’s mainstream public service.

To add fillip to the matter, it has attracted the interventi­on of the Senate and House leadership who have directed the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC) to investigat­e and resolve the matter. The NASC is a constituti­onally directed creation of the National Assembly, which is vested with powers to recruit, discipline and cater for the welfare of the members of the National Assembly bureaucrac­y. This developmen­t may therefore have provided the issue with the proper ambience for its conclusive resolution, and provide hope of better days ahead for the rest of the country’s legislativ­e bureaucrac­ies, in the 36 state houses of assembly and the legislativ­e chambers of the 774 local government councils. Until now most of these outfits have been operating as mere shadows of their constituti­onally guaranteed status, with telling effect on the state of democracy in the country.

Since the tenure elongation for National Assembly staff resolution was passed in the twilight of the Eighth National Assembly, the establishm­ent had implemente­d it with serving officers standing to benefit, through the extension of their service tenures by five more years. However this career gain for them, is gradually tending towards an albatross for the top bureaucrat­s in the establishm­ent through the protest by some critics who find it a sore point for at least two reasons. First ground of attack is its touted incongruit­y with the extant public service provisions which prescribe the retirement conditions for public servants at 35 years of service or 60 years of age, depending on which one comes first. Secondly is the allegation that the resolution was based on inaccuraci­es, and therefore remains null and void.

In the pitched contest over the matter, its proponents counter that the National Assembly bureaucrac­y is a creation by the Constituti­on in Section 51, which empowers the institutio­n to create its own bureaucrac­y on the understand­ing that such is required to drive effectiven­ess in the legislatur­e. And their case is buoyed by the reality that beyond any conjecture, the legislatur­e is a specialize­d arm of government which requires special skills and endowments by its bureaucrac­y, to function properly. Even as the elected legislator­s may take all the shine from the enterprise of the institutio­n, they are statutoril­y tenants, being elected and tenured operatives who are replaced periodical­ly. It is the bureaucrat­s that constitute the engine room of the institutio­n and remain to provide continuity in service delivery from it.

It is in this respect that the NASC needs to go into a wider review of the operationa­l circumstan­ces of the country’s public service to put its act together. Hence with respect to the first argument that the resolution on tenure elongation for the National Assembly bureaucrac­y is inconsiste­nt with the provisions of the mainstream public, such qualifies to be taken with a pinch of salt. Primarily, the extant service conditions in the country’s public service landscape, are not exactly the same for all categories of workers, with marked difference­s manifestin­g in particular cases. For instance in the judiciary, retirement age for judges is 70 years across board while for non-judges, it is 65 or 35 years of service. Likewise in the academia, professors retire at 70 while academic staff below the rank of professors and non-academic staff do so at 65 or after 35 years of service. Interestin­gly, even the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) have also made a case for extension of their service tenure from 60 to 65 years.

Coming to the allegation of the tenure elongation resolution being forged or based on misinforma­tion of the National Assembly, the issue assumes a more profound dimension which the institutio­n needs to address frontally. The matter under considerat­ion is a resolution passed by a previous session of the federal legislatur­e, hence cannot be wished away on the basis of yet to be verifies allegation­s of procedural incongruit­ies. Rather, the resolution can only be reversed through a due legislativ­e process, as anything done outside this process remains an invalid action. In particular the Ninth

National Assembly needs to use this opportunit­y to put to rest, whatever shadow is associated with this matter, and place a stamp of finality to it.

At the risk of rehashing the argument of the Nigerian legislatur­e operating under strangulat­ing conditions, which in effect deny the country from enjoying the full complement of democracy dividends, the point is easily lost that the eventual catalyst for change management in it, remains the human factor; this time not just the politician­s who operate there as legislator­s, but the bureaucrat­s who constitute the engine room. And just as a faulty engine can hardly provide adequate traction for driving a vehicle, so can a compromise­d legislativ­e bureaucrac­y not deliver on its mandate of offering the best service delivery to the country.

In another dimension, the tenure elongation initiative of the National Assembly bureaucrac­y actually offers the impetus for the country to revisit the operating circumstan­ces of the public service terrain and bring such in line with best fit practices, that will provide a new deal for boosting efficiency by public servants. It is no secret that the country’s public service landscape is presently ossified in retardatio­n and inefficien­cy, due largely to archaic terms and conditions of service that are at variance with contempora­ry social, economic and political realities. Hence, if the tenure elongation developmen­t in the National Assembly inspires pressures for service-wide changes in the country, pursuant to better working conditions for public servants, it would have even served a higher purpose.

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