The Association, led by it’s National President, Mohammed Usman, appreciated the National Assembly for voting for the autonomy of the state Legislature in the ongoing constitutional review.
The Association solicited the support of the Senate President for the unification of salary structure for all Legislative workers in the country and called for the extension of the tenure of Legislative workers from 35 years to 40 years of service and from 60 years to 65 years of age whichever comes first.
The Senate President said: “It is our desire and wish to see that the staff are properly remunerated within the available resources.
“We believe that our staff should be properly remunerated and we have been working on that. I know that the Clerk of the National Assembly has been working with you.
“I heard the National President calling for a review of the service years. I’m not sure about this at this moment. I want to be very frank with you because when we came in 2019 we inherited a crisis…We are not saying we will not support that but we have to be very systematic. We have to be very careful.
“So we will look at how we can take the appropriate steps, follow due process and do due diligence so that whatever eventually happens, nobody can fault it.
“So I want to assure you that we will take the appropriate steps and follow the due process. Not like the way it went before because the way it went before was chaotic, very disorganised and clumsy and a confusion of some sort that almost crash the personnel system particularly in the National Assembly. So you can take that as an approval in principle for your request.
On financial autonomy for the state Legislature, the Senate President said the National Assembly, at all times, believed that the Legislature, especially at the state level, should have financial autonomy.
“The first time the National Assembly passed a bill making provisions for that, the state Houses of Assembly could not marshal the required two-third of the state Legislature to achieve that and therefore it failed.
“But the National Assembly members have remained consistent because we believe that Legislature…for it to perform well and discharge it’s mandate effectively, it doesn’t need to be tied to apron string of anyone especially the executive arm of government.
“So we have done that again with the current review of the 1999 constitution. It is our hope that, this time around, the state Legislature will pass it by at least the two-third to achieve the financial autonomy for the state Legislature.
