Senator representing Ekiti Central and Leader of the Senate, Opeyemi Bamidele, has cautioned Nigerians to stop the derisive label of the 10th National Assembly as a rubber-stamp parliament.

He declared in a statement on Sunday that there was no justification for it.

Peeved by the speedy passage of Executive Bills and certain formal requests of the Presidency requiring statutory legislative approvals, Nigerians have dismissed the National Assembly as a mere appendage of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led executive arm.

But the Senate Leader, in a statement issued by Directorate of Media and Public Affairs in his office, maintained that there was no justification for the tag ‘rubber-stamp parliament’ and accused the NASS of subordinating itself to President Tinubu.

Senator Bamidele cited the rigorous process and what he called the strategic engagement of Nigerians before the passage of the controversial Tax Reform Bills to fault the claim.

“If we are actually a rubber-stamp parliamentary institution, as most opposition political parties have claimed, the bills would have been passed within one week or two weeks after they were laid before us.

“In the process of passing the bills, both executive and legislative arms held over 39 engagements to trash grey areas in the Tax Reform Bills, 2024 before both chambers of the National Assembly eventually passed the bills.

“During this period, the engagements involved diverse interests and stakeholders across the federation. The tax reform bills could have been rushed within one or two weeks. But it took us six months to secure input from all critical stakeholders – civil society organisations, professional bodies, religious leaders and leaders of thought.

“The process includes all behind-the-scenes efforts, closed-door meetings and subtle disagreements that took place between the legislature and the executive before their passage. We also organised public hearings just to accommodate inputs from diverse interests.

“We extended our engagements to all captains of industries to enable us to pass the tax reform bills that will stand the test of time, meet the needs of our people and ensure the overriding public interest in the exercise of our constitutional mandates.

“At the end of it, we found a way of resolving all issues around the tax reform bills in the overriding public interest. But people do not know all the efforts and sacrifices we made to ensure the effective delivery of public goods. They were only eager to label us a rubber stamp when the bills came from the executive.”

He equally cited the case of the 2025 Appropriation Act, which according to him, was laid before the joint session of the National Assembly on Wednesday, 18th December 2024, but passed on February 13, 2025.

He maintained that if the National Assembly was actually a rubber stamp, it could have hastened the passage of the 2025 Appropriation Bills by the end of the 2024 fiscal year in order to sustain the January to December budget cycle, which had become the country’s practice in recent times.

“We did not give the budget back to the executive until February 2025. We did a lot of due diligence. Every committee of the National Assembly duly engaged heads of agencies to properly scrutinise the budget also in the overriding public interest.

“We are working in the interest of the people. We are always taking into consideration the need to ensure good governance in all our undertakings and the need to use legislative frameworks to promote good governance in the federation,” he said.

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