Some commissioners and staff members of the National Assembly Service Commission [NASC] have frowned at the appointment of Mr. Fatai Jimoh as the Chief of Staff [CoS] to the new Chairman of the Commission.
The commissioners are said to be uncomfortable with the purported appointment of Jimoh as CoS to the Service Commission chairman because of his antecedents in the National Assembly bureaucracy.
Sources close to the NASC said the gravamen of their complaints also centred on the fact that the appointment of an outsider was wrong, if not patently illegal.
Their argument is that appointing a retired Deputy Clerk [Legilsative], when someone from the pool of competent and serving staff members in the National Assembly Service Commission could be tapped for the position, was ill-advised.
They are of the point that the appointment was not salutary to the current effort at pragmatic repositioning of the National Assembly Service Commission and the National Assembly.
Human resources within the system, as argued, should be leveraged to save overhead costs that would go into salaries and emoluments/allowances of an outsider.
Staff members who spoke to THE CONCLAVE on the issue said point blank that a CoS could be deployed in the office of the Commission chairman from among the top management staff members who have been there for years and have advantage of institutional memory/experience.
A staff member said: “There are staff members who have repository knowledge and experience about the workings of the commission and are better qualified to be the chairman’s chief of staff.
“Why bring in someone who has no knowledge of the operations of the Commission?”
Others were eager to know how the CoS would be paid and from which budget subhead.
One of them stated that tapping a staff member would cure the mischief of bringing somebody from retirement to play a role that the bureaucrats could easily fit into on their extant salary and allowances as captured in the relevant subhead of the budget for overhead.
According to him, “The chairman should be careful in his planned bid to lead the commission and the national assembly side-by-side, which is the likely reason behind appointing a retired NASS top bureaucrat.”
In addition, others outright declared the appointment as illegal as “the position is not provided for in the extant law establishing NASC.
This group with its extreme position, wants the Chairman to rescind the appointment of Fatai Jimoh altogether.
“The earlier the chairman withdraws the appointment of Mr. Fatai Jimoh as his chief of staff, the better for him and the commission,” one of them stated.
It would be recalled that Mr. Jimoh is the immediate past Deputy Clerk [legislative] before he retired from the National Assembly.
Jimoh was said to have ignited a controversy until his retirement due to his role in pushing through the controversial National Assembly Pension Board.
He reportedly midwived it to achieve some allegedly promote some selfish ends.
The bill, now an Act of the National Assembly, is said to be suffering serious defects, because the Act is not implementable, thereby creating hostility between retired and retiring staff members of the National Assembly and the office of the Clerk to the National Assembly.
The concern in NASC is that allowing Mr. Fatai Jimoh to remain as chief of staff to the commission chairman could ignite a frosty relationship between NASS management and the commission.
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