The leader of the Senate, OPEYEMI BAMIDELE has opposed key opposition parties in the country for labelling the National Assembly a rubber-stamp parliament.
BAMIDELE, currently representing Ekiti Central, in a statement released yesterday,argued that if the National Assembly was actually a rubber-stamp, it could not have held over 39 meetings with the executive arm to trash out all grey areas in the Tax Reform Bills, 2024 before they were eventually passed.
X-raying diverse interventions that the National Assembly had taken in the overriding public interest, the senate leader lamented that despite NASS approach to the legislative business, the parliament has been under sustained public criticisms with leading opposition parties, especially the Peoples Democracy Party, Labour Party and New Nigeria Peoples Party describing it as a rubber-stamp legislative institution.
To buttress his point, BAMIDELE also 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, explaining that the assembly could have hastened the passage of the Bills by the end of the 2024 fiscal year, if what the opposition parties said was true.
