Senate to opposition: National Assembly not rubber stamp

Senate leader Opeyemi Bamidele on Sunday opposed key opposition parties in the country for labelling the national assembly a rubber-stamp parliament.

Mr Bamidele, representing Ekiti Central, said if the national parliament was a rubber stamp, it could not have held over 39 meetings with the executive arm to remove all grey areas in the Tax Reform Bills 2024 before they were eventually passed.

The national assembly, he said, had, at its inauguration on June 13, 2023, embraced strategic engagement and partnership to address thorny national issues in the pursuit of the country’s vital and peripheral interests.

Despite its non-adversarial approach to the legislative business, the APC politician noted that the parliament has been under sustained public criticism.

This is with leading opposition parties, especially the Peoples Democracy Party, Labour Party and New Nigeria People’s Party, describing it as a rubber-stamp legislative institution.

Mr Bamidele first cited the case of the Tax Reform Bills, 2024, which he said were initiated in November 2024 but finally scaled through legislative scrutiny six months after.

“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.

“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,” stated the politician.

Mr Bamidele explained that the federal parliament invited the executive to thrash out grey areas in the bills at different times.

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

Mr Bamidele explained that if the parliament was a rubber stamp, it could have hastened the passage of the 2025 Appropriation Bills by the end of the 2024 fiscal year.