
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 justifiable proof.
Bamidele, 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 resolve the grey areas in the Tax Reform Bills, 2024 before they were eventually passed.
This was disclosed in a statement released by the Directorate of Media and Public Affairs, Office of the Leader of the Senate on Sunday.
He said, “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.”
The legislator further highlighted that diverse interventions taken by the National Assembly were in the overriding interest of the public.
While stating that the engagements during the period included contributions from stakeholders across the federation, Bamidele asserted that it took the national assembly six months to secure all inputs after they were laid before the National Assembly.
He said, “The process includes all behind-the-scenes efforts, closed-door meetings and subtle disagreements that took place between the legislature and the executive before their passage. We also organised public hearings just to accommodate inputs from diverse interests.
“We extended our engagements to all captains of industries to enable us pass the tax reform bills that will stand the test of time; meet the needs of our people and ensure the overriding public interest in the exercise of our constitutional mandates.
“At the end of it, we found a way of resolving all issues around the tax reform bills in the overriding public interest. 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.
“Recall that the 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.
“Despite its non-adversarial 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.”
Bamidele explained that the national assembly at different times invited the executive for engagement with a view to resolve all the grey areas in the bills.
The lawmaker 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 eventually passed on February 13, 2025.
In his defence, the Senate leader reiterated that if the national assembly was actually a rubber stamp, it could have hastened the passage of the 2025 Appropriation Bills by the end of the 2024 fiscal year to sustain the January to December budget cycle, which had become the usual practice in recent times.
“We did not give the budget back to the executive until February 2025. We did a lot of due diligence. Every committee of the National Assembly duly engaged heads of agencies to properly scrutinise the budget also in the overriding public interest.
“We are working in the interest of the people. We are always taking into consideration the need to ensure good governance in all our undertakings and the need to use legislative frameworks to promote good governance in the federation,” he explained.