Senate to Investigate MDAs’ Adherence to Federal Character Principle

The Senate has resolved to investigate the compliance by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) with federal character principle.

This followed the adoption of a motion sponsored by Senator Osita Ngwu at Tuesday’s plenary in Abuja.

Ngwu had in the motion titled: “Urgent need to address systemic abuse and ineffective implementation of federal character principle in Nigeria’s public sector,” lamented that systemic abuse had become a major challenge to achieving balance and equity within Nigeria’s public service.

He said the challenge was due to limited recruitment opportunities, skewed promotions based solely on years of service and insufficient avenues for worker-mobility outside the public sector.

According to him, the federal character principle mandates fair representation in federal appointments to reflect linguistic, religious and geographic diversity of the country.

The senator expressed concern that the process of addressing public sector disparities had been undermined by institutional inertia and lack of accountability.

This, he said, was particularly prevalent in the area of recruitments at senior levels and influenced more by internal preferences than by merit and fairness.

“The quota system has, in many cases, created confusion between merit-based recruitment and equitable state representation, to the detriment of discipline, morale, and institutional efficiency,” he said.

Ngwu alleged that various federal institutions had consistently failed to adhere to the federal character mandates, often by-passing regulations in their recruitment exercises.

He listed some of the agencies to include the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and its subsidiaries like Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).

Others are the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), National Pension Commission (PenCom), Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) and Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA).

He also listed Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN), Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NNRA), and National Library of Nigeria (NLN) among those flouting the federal character principle.

The Senate in its resolution mandated its Committee on Federal Character and Inter-Governmental Affairs to investigate the compliance by MDAs with federal character principle.