By Kayode Araba
Thus, the leader of the Senate, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele on Sunday opposed key opposition parties in the country for labelling the National Assembly a rubber-stamp parliament without any justification or proof.
Senator, currently representing Ekiti Central, said 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.
Bamidele added that National Assembly had, at its inauguration on the 13th June 2023, embraced strategic engagement and partnership to address thorny national issues in the pursuit of the country’s vital and peripheral interests.
However, 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 they were laid before the National Assembly.
Furthermore, senate leader argued that 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.
That 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.
