Retirement Age: Senate Approves Bill To Extend Service Period For National Assembly Staff

The Senate has endorsed a bill seeking to increase the retirement age of National Assembly staff from 60 to 65 years.

The Senate granted concurrence to the bill during Thursday’s plenary session, which had been previously rejected on February 22 but had secured passage in the House of Representatives.

The proposed legislation, titled, ‘A Bill for an Act to make provision for retirement age of staff of National Assembly Service and For Other related Matters’, was presented again for agreement by the Senate Leader, Bamidele Opeyemi, who belongs to the APC party and represents Ekiti state.

During the debate led by Opeyemi, it was emphasized that extensive corrections had been implemented in the bill, incorporating inputs into various clauses and paying particular attention to global best practices, notably in defining legislative officers, as observed in more advanced democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

Opeyemi said, “These countries had adopted the standard we want to adopt, in terms of the need to establish and strengthen institutional memories by ensuring a certain retirement age threshold for legislative officials.”

Naija News reports that the bill, initially rejected after a heated debate on February 22, would benefit the current Clerk of the National Assembly, Sani Tambuwal.

The bill faced significant opposition, particularly from Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, who questioned the distinction between National Assembly staff employed by the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC) and those in other government agencies.