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…Tasks House of Reps On Electoral Bill
… To discuss proposed subsidy removal with Organised Labour
By John Ugo, Awka
The Nigeria Governors Forum has commended the Senate for the removal of the contentious clauses in the draft electoral bill and hope that the second chamber, the House of Representatives would also follow suit so that the revised electoral bill can return to Mr. President for assent.
The forum noted that taking the necessary steps to amend the relevant sections of the Electoral bill would enable the various institutions, particularly, the Independent Nationak Electorsl Commisdion to proceed with its pace and responsibilities towards the various elections.
In addition, the governors further reviewed the recently launched national development plan 2021-2025 with a view to ensuring that the national development plan is aligned to individual state development plans that have been produced or in the process of being produced to ensure synergy between the development efforts by the Federal as well as State Governments.
Chairman of the forum and Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Fayemi Kayode stated this at the end of the 1st meeting of the body for the year 2022 held in Abuja to deliberate on issues of national importance.
They also discussed the issue surrounding the much speculated removal of the petroleum subsidy and concluded to engage the leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress on how best to address this issue without causing any disaffection or with the view to savaging the Nigerian economy for the Nigerian people at the end of the day.
According to the NGF chairman, ‘we shall be engaging the Nigerian Labour Congress as sub national leaders with the view to ensuring that the outcome of our engagement will also be fed into the national discuss.’
He said, “the Governors commended the Senate of the Federal Republic for accelerating the removal of the contentious clauses in the draft electoral bill and hope that the second chamber, the House of Representatives, would also follow suit so that the revised electoral bill can return to Mr. President for assent so that this can then enable the various institutions particularly INEC to proceed her pace with its responsibilities towards the various elections in 2022 and 2023.”
“We also discussed the health update particularly in relation to COVID-19 infections and expressed happiness that the current Omicron variant has been declining progressively. However, we also noted that there is the need for States led by us to ramp up the COVID-19 vaccination excercise.”
He stated that “Nutrition remains a priority of the Government, stressing that it was the Governors conclusion that there was the need to increase our support in terms of budgetary provisions for nutrition.”
