National Assembly postpones resumption by 2 weeks

Federal lawmakers will no longer resume from their long Christmas and New Year holidays on the 26th of January, 2021.

A statement by the Clerk to the National Assembly, Ojo Olatunde Amos, announced a new resumption date for Tuesday, February 9, 2921.

According to the Clerk, the shift in resumption date is to enable members of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, to participate in the registration and revalidation of its membership scheduled to begin on Monday, 25th January across the country.

The decision to postpone their resumption date has, however, provoked anger in many quarters; reigniting calls that the National Assembly especially the Senate should either be scrapped or their job reduced to part-part basis and lower total cost of governance.

A quick check on the schedule for Federal lawmakers revealed that they spent less than seven months in active parliamentary engagements last year.

The lawmakers did not resume until mid-January in 2020 and by March ending; they had embarked on a lockdown from Covid-19, donating their salaries as palliatives to cushion the impact of the pandemic on poor citizens.

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The lawmakers, however, returned briefly in May but disappeared quickly again in July for their annual nine weeks holiday, and even when their holiday ended in September, the National Assembly did not resume until October to attend mainly to the 2021 budget.