Senators are quarreling among themselves over job slots

 
Nigerian senators are reportedly not in good terms with each other as job scandal looms at the red chamber. 

Lawmakers at the Nigerian Senate are reportedly in disagreement over job recruitment slots allocated to them by some federal agencies.

It was gathered that the federal agencies gave the legislators the  slots through their leaders. To the dismay of some senators, the slots were said to be shared among the 10-member body of principal officers.

“We were given 100 slots by the FIRS but our leaders  shared the slots among themselves,” an aggrieved senator from the South-West, who spoke on condition of anonymity was quoted as saying.

Similarly, a ranking senator from the North-West said one of their leaders gave 26 slots to people in his senatorial district.

The senator added, "There is a problem in the Senate already, because the leadership has cornered jobs meant for the entire Nigerians."

Also speaking anonymously, a senator from the Southeast said he expected every legislator to have been given a slot.

Confirming the reported disagreement in the senate, a member of the Senate Committee on Federal Character, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said "the fact that the leaders allegedly collected 100 slots and shared them among themselves has shown that we cannot win the war against the lopsidedness that we talk about in this country."

“Some of our colleagues are already coming to lobby us to take it easy with the probe but we are going ahead with it," he added.

Addressing some newsmen on the matter, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Character, Danjuma La’ah revealed that he was not unaware that some federal agencies had allegedly reached out to the leaders of the Senate.

La'ah said the committee is probing the allegations that some agencies had been secretly recruiting without advertising the jobs, adding that the red chamber leadership is yet to confirm to the committee if any slot has been received by them.

Meanwhile, the committee had last week started investigating the allegations of secret recruitment by the FIRS, National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLA), National Space Research and Development Agency (NSRDA), National Open University (NOU), and the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC).

 By Mgor Victor