The National Assembly has forwarded to President Muhammadu Buhari for assent to the harmonised version of the bill on the Nigeria Peace Corps.

This was after passage by the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Transmission of the bill for presidential assent by the national assembly’s clerk, Sani Tambuwal, was carried out this week via a letter.

The letter, according to an authoritative source in the assembly on Thursday, written on the letterhead of the clerk’s office, was dated April 12 and directly addressed to Mr Buhari.

The source added that three copies of the authenticated copies of the bills were forwarded to the president for assent, one of which is expected to be retained by him and the other two sent back to the national assembly for further action.

In line with provisions of the 1999 Constitution, Mr Buhari is expected to assent to the bill on or before May 11, when the 30-day window given for such important action must have been exploited.

If assented to the existing Peace Corps of Nigeria operated on the template of volunteerism over the years, it will now be a federal government-owned agency in the name of Nigeria Peace Corps.

On April 12, 2022, the bill passed the third reading after Sadiq Umar, chairman of the senate committee on interior, presented a report. The bill was sponsored by Ali Ndume, the senator representing Borno North.

While presenting the report on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, Mr Umar said his committee received “hundreds of memoranda” from stakeholders supporting the passage of the legislation.

The senator said the bill, if passed and assented to by the president, would help tackle rising unemployment in the country.

After that, the Senate went into the committee of the whole to consider and pass 40 sections of the bill.

In 2018, Mr Buhari rejected the bill, citing security concerns and the financial burden of funding the organisation.

But Mr Ndume reintroduced the bill in 2019, arguing that the concerns raised by the president had been addressed in the new bill. The bill passed its first reading shortly after the inauguration of the ninth national assembly. 

(NAN)