Senate: We passed a bill on the peace corps introduced by Akoh

Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, spokesman of the senate, says the peace corps bill passed by the national assembly is the one introduced by Dickson Akoh.

On Tuesday, the upper legislative chamber passed the bill after it adopted a conference committee report on the proposal.

Akoh, commandant of the Peace Corps of Nigeria, and Chinedu Nneji, commandant-general of National Unity and Peace Corps had both addressed press conferences thanking the national for passing the legislation.

But speaking with journalists on Thursday, Abdullahi, said reports that the national assembly passed national unity and peace corps bill was misleading; hence the need to make clarifications.

“Let me say that, in the senate, we had the Nigerian peace corps bill and we also had the national unity and peace corps bill,” he said.

“When we were considering the peace corps bill, an observation was raised that there was another bill which has similar objectives, that was the national unity and peace corps bill.

“So it was agreed that the bill should be incorporated into the Nigerian peace corps bill. That was done. When we did that, we then passed our own version.

“The house of reps maintained, that there was no bill called the national unity and peace corps bill. So, there was no basis for harmonisation.  They maintained their stand that the only bill they passed was the Nigerian peace corps bill, for which we also considered. So, at that point of harmonisation, the conference committee adopted the position of the house of reps.

“Effectively, what this means is that, the only agency which we considered its bill was the bill that said, the Peace Corps of Nigeria and, of course, dissolution within the context of that bill only referred to Peace Corps of Nigeria.

“What that means effectively is that, the bill that says national unity and peace corps bill is still intact, there is no provision in our law where we have even touched it. We want to advise Nigerians to be guided by what we have done, there should be no ambiguity.

“We know there are people out there who are claiming that the bill we passed affected them, I don’t think that is the correct picture. The bill we passed and adopted, was the one promoted by the Peace Corps of Nigeria under Mr Dickson Akoh.”