News Group tackles N’Assembly over bloated committees

A group, Friends in the Gap Advocacy Initiative, on Thursday
condemned the creation of additional standing committees by
the two chambers of the 8th National Assembly.
The group in a statement by its Executive Director, George Oji,
noted that the initial 89 standing committees in the House of
Representatives had been raised to 96, while in the Senate, the
committees had also been increased from 57 to 65.
The statement explained that there was no official explanation
from the two chambers of the parliament for the increment.
It nevertheless said feelers from the lawmakers indicated that
the increase was intended to assuage many contending political
interests and power blocks that were thrown up by the elections
of the current leaderships of the two arms of the parliament.
The group also faulted the argument by some other lawmakers
that the increment was meant to improve on the oversight
function of the legislature.
The statement read in part, “It is our belief that neither of the
two reasons support or indeed convincingly justifies the
increment. Both arguments beg the issue.
“Regarding the argument that the increase is meant to enhance
better oversight of the executive, we make bold to state that it is
on record that the first test of the over-sighting of the executive
by the present legislators have been woefully defeated by the
Senate through the recently-concluded screening and
confirmation of the ministerial nominees.
“Therefore, that argument falls flat in the face of this bare
example. On the reason that the increment is meant to settle
bulging political interests, we regret to say that such an
argument is only self-serving and does not take into
cognizance, overriding national interests.”
The group said it considered the bloating of the standing
committees in both chambers of the National Assembly at this
point in the nation’s development, as unnecessary,
irresponsible, superfluous and out of tune with the present
economic reality in the country.
It added, “The increment is unfortunately coming at a time the
present executive arm of government is concerned about the
increasing cost of governance and in line with President
Muhammadu Buhari’s philosophy of reducing the recurrent
expenditure component of our national budget.
“Government has embarked on measures aimed at reducing the
number of existing ministries, departments and agencies of
government.
“The least we expect from our elected representatives is to key
into the philosophy of the present executive arm of government
and seek ways of drawing down on the high cost of governance,
especially recurrent expenditure, in response to the current
dwindling resources of our economy.
“A comparative review of what obtains across other parliaments
globally shows that while the rest of other jurisdictions of the
world are thinning down the size of their parliamentary
committees for effectiveness, in Nigeria, the reverse is
unfortunately the case.
“For instance in the United States of America, where Nigeria
borrowed our presidential system of government firm, the
Senate with 100 members has only 20 committees (16 standing
committees and 4 select committees).
“The House of Representatives on the other hand, with a
membership of 435 has only a paltry 21 congressional
committees, (20 standing committees and one select
committee).
“In the United Kingdom, committees are broken down to two;
select and legislative committees. While the select committees
embark on investigative activities, the legislative committees
engage more in debate of bills.
“The House of Lords, with a membership of 745, has a small 16
select committees, while the House of Commons has only 47 of
such committees.”