Reps: Why we created more committees – Abbas

From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, has said the 10th increased the number of standing Committees from 109 to 136, so as to increase their efficiency.

Abbas, who stated this on Tuesday at an interaction with journalists in Abuja, said that prior to the creation of new committees, some of the existing ones had so much agencies under them, thereby making effective oversight difficult.

The Speaker explained that for instance, the Committees on Monitoring and Evaluation and Implementation were created to ensure that standing committees perform optimally.

According to him, “There are so many things that the 10th Assembly has brought onboard that will not only enhance our efficiency in the House but will also give value addition to the country. One of them is the creation of a standing Committee to monitor the activities of all standing committees in the House.

“You will agree with me that in the past not all committees were active because of one thing or the other. This time around, we want to ensure that every standing committee leaves up to its responsibility. Every standing committee must be seen working for the betterment of Nigeria.

“We want transparency, we want result oriented administration and that is the reason why we decided that this time around there should be a standing committee that will be monitoring what is happening in the other standing committees.

“We also bring on board another standing committee that will monitor the implementation of our legislative agenda. We set a standing committee to be monitoring how we are going about implementing our legislative agenda.

“You are also aware that we brought on board so many additional committees during the last three months and we are not just doing it to satisfy members who wants to leaders in the National Assembly. It is to enable us to further deepen our oversight legislative function. Some committees are so large to oversight.

“I’ll give you an example. For example, the committee on tertiary education in the past has over 300 agencies under it. They won’t be able to cover the agencies within the year. Today we have over 130 committees in place of the 109 that we inherited at the end of the 9th Assembly.”