Only President Buhari Can Halt 774,000 Jobs Scheme

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Says FG Never Increase Electric Tariff

The Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo,
has said that members of the House of Representatives have no
powers to halt the Federal Government’s Public Works Programme.

According to him, only the president can halt the 774,000 jobs
scheme which commenced on Tuesday.

“They were urging Mr President, (look at the resolution, they
cannot actually mandate) – to see whether they could halt
commencement of the programme, but Mr President had actually
directed that we commence the programme. It is only Mr President
that can actually say that we should stop implementation of the
programme, so on the directive of Mr President, we have actually
commenced the programme,” Keyamo said on Channels Television’s
Politics Today.

The House of Representatives had last month passed a resolution
mandating the minister to stay action on the planned implementation
of the scheme.

The reps had insisted that the programme will not be implemented
until a comprehensive list of beneficiaries from the Nigerian
directorate of employment is made available.

But despite the hesitation by both chambers of the National
Assembly, the programme has commenced across the country.

Under the scheme, 774,000 people are expected to be recruited by
the Federal Government, with the sum of N52 billion, earmarked in
the 2020 budget.

1,000 persons are to be employed from each of the 774 Local
Government Areas in the country, for the programme which is said to
be a post-COVID-19 poverty alleviation initiative, approved by
President Muhammadu Buhari.

While speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on
Tuesday, Keyamo, said the FG only adjusted some bands for consumers
to pay what they are supposed to pay.

He said the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC)
did not consult him or other members of the committee working on
the new electricity tariffs regime, before the announcement earlier
in the day.

NERC again increased electricity tariffs payable by power
consumers across the country.

Providing reasons for the latest tariff hike, the commission had
said it considered the 14.9 per cent inflation rate rise in
November 2020 and foreign exchange of N379.4/$1 as of December 29,
2020.

When asked whether the electricity distribution companies have
the approval of the government to increase tariffs following the
NERC directive, Keyamo said, “I am the chairman of the
sub-committee consisting of the Federal Government side and Labour
side that has been mandated to go round the country to interact and
consult with stakeholders and the discos to find an acceptable and
cost-reflective tariff that should be paid by Nigerians. We are
still in the process of carrying out our assignment, we have not
finished it.

“There has been no increase in tariff. What we agreed to do was
to freeze certain bands. You know we have band A, B, C, D and so on
and so forth. So, in the interim, what we did was to adjust certain
bands and to ensure that certain persons who are supposed to be on
some bands are not wrongly put on some other bands.

“What has just been done is adjustment of certain bands but
there has not been any increase in tariffs.”