The Minority Caucus in the House of Representatives has accused chieftains of the All progressive Congress (APC) of high jacking the 774 public jobs scheme to themselves.
But the APC shrugged off the accusation, arguing that there is no iota of truth in the claim.
The Ndudi ELumelu-led caucus while alleging that the jobs allotment was in favour of certain interests in the APC to the detriment of job seekers, he called for more transparency and a review of the criteria being used for the jobs.
The caucus rejected the 30 job slots allotted to each member of the House for their respective local government areas under the public jobs scheme.
The caucus described the allotment of 30 out of the 1000 slots per local government, as grossly unfair and unacceptable as they are the true representatives of the people.
Elumelu who also represents Aniocha North/Aniocha South and Oshimili North and South Federal Constituency of Delta State, insisted that “the 30 persons allotment to be supervised by a member in each of the local government areas, cannot by any criteria, said to be a true representation of the people they are mandated to represent.
It noted: “The 30 persons allotment per local government for lawmakers is grossly unfair, inadequate and unacceptable to Nigerians. As the representatives of the people, we are closer to them and they directly interact with us, irrespective of religion, class and political affiliations.
“All Nigerians living in our constituencies are our constituents, irrespective of political leanings. We have a responsibility to protect their interests at all times. As such lawmakers ought to have been carried along on the allotment.
“Moreover, the questions are, what criteria is being used in the job allotments? Given the 30 persons out of the 1000 per local government area allotted to Federal lawmakers, what happens to the remaining 970? What answers do we give Nigerians? How do we ensure that the program benefited Nigerians and not enmeshed in allegations of sharp practices as witnessed in the COVID-19 palliative distribution?”
The caucus charged President Muhamamdu Buhari to immediately order a review of the implementation process to ensure that the targeted citizens benefited from the program as intended.
The APC spokesperson, Mr. Yekini Nabena said the exercise carried out by the Minister of State for Labour, Mr. Festus Keyamo, remains transparently done without any form of political consideration.
He said: “Traditional rulers, religious leaders and local government chairmen across the country got the jobs slots. Is ELumelu saying they are all APC card carrying members? I will give you a personal example, my local government chairman in Sagbama council of Bayelsa State is a PDP member.
“The problem with these PDP members is that they have all been infected with the PDP virus. They should stop crying wolf where there is none. The truth is that we got it right on this particular exercise supervised by Keyamo.”