The Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Mr. Festus Keyamo, was walked out of a meeting by some senators on Tuesday 30th June 2020
The lawmakers had invited Keyamo to give details of the Special Public Works Programme where 774,000 people would be recruited by the Federal Government under the National Directorate of Employment (NDE).
The members of the Senate and House of Representatives Joint Committee on Labour sought to find out the method of selection of a 20-man committee from each state for the program during the meeting which was held at the National Assembly in Abuja.
However, a hot argument burst between committee members and Keyamo over who should lead the program which was to be domiciled under the National Directorate of Employment.
As the unruly session occurs, the committee decided to go into a closed-door session to discuss the matter, but the minister refused, demanding that further discussions be held in the presence of journalists.
This enraged the lawmakers who told Keyamo to apologize to the committee, but he ignored them. So he was asked to leave the meeting since he refused to apologize to the committee members.
The lawmakers claimed that Keyamo has no right to direct the committee on how to conduct its proceedings, and this happened a day after the minister inaugurated the 20-member committees in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) by essence means.
He said, 1,000 persons would be selected from each of the 774 local government areas in the country to be engaged by the government in this Special Public Works Programme.
