Follow Us on Google
From: FRED ITUA, Abuja
Chairmen of the various standing committee in the Senate have initiated moves to ensure that their current positions remain secure, while those who feel cheated when the committee heads were announced in late 2016, are not leaving anything to chance.
The fresh apprehensions and lobbyings are coming on the heels of an announcement made by the Senate President Bukola Saraki that the leadership would carry out a ‘clean up’ exercise that would likely lead to a major rejig of its standing committees.
At the moment, the Senate has a total number of 68 standing committees. Saraki said the exercise would go a long way in assisting the Red Chamber in cleaning up its committee system.
The clean up, according to the Senate President, would be done before members of the upper legislative chamber would proceed on its end-of-session holiday later in the month.
Saraki made the revelations when he responded to an observation made by the Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, who had complained about the structure of committees of the Senate at the moment and had described it as “very unhealthy.”
Ekweremadu had drawn his observation from the report presented by the Senate committee on Tertiary Education, during which he noted that out of the 22 members of the committee, only 12 signed the report.
He said that it was unusual and unwieldy for the Senate to continue to tolerate the development. “We must ensure that senators are placed in the number of committees they can handle,” he said.
Responding, Saraki said: “I agree with you. We are going to clean it up before we go on recess. We have discussed this at the leadership level and we are going to do something about it to ensure that the right thing is done.”
It was learnt that the Senate leadership had become uncomfortable with a development where many lawmakers forced themselves into membership of committees they were not originally posted to.
A credible Senate source, disclosed to Daily Sun that contrary to the Senate Standing Rule which pegged the maximum membership of committees at 11, many committees particularly those considered as ‘juicy’ now have as many as 22 to 25 members.
The last time the Senate reshuffled its committees was in 2016 when many Senators who hitherto were not accommodated in ‘juicy’ committees, were appointed as chairmen.
The committee system was subsequently in January, 2017 slightly adjusted when the Senate created three new committees and reshuffled the chairmanship of two others.
The development then brought the number of committees in the Senate to 68.
