How New House committees emerged: The gains, the expectations .

By Gabriel Abu  

At last, the House of Representatives standing committees have been reconstituted. The reconstituted committees came after a long wait by the nation; almost one year after the leadership headed by the Rt. Hon. Dimeji Bankole came on board. But it is a long wait that many watchers of the activities of the House in the last twelve months or so will agree is worth the while of the nation.

The House has been slow and steady in reconstituting the committees which in politically informed circles have been described as the hub of the parliament because one of the most significant functions of the legislature - oversight - is performed at the committee level. Afterall, slow and steady, an adage says, wins the race. The House would appear to have been slow and steady in reconstituting the committees to reposition the parliament for effective lawmaking and exercise of the oversight function.

advertisement

 When the Bankole leadership took office late last year, one of the areas the preceding administration of the House had been faulted was the standing committees reconstitution, an exercise that was carried out barely two months earlier. One, the opposition parties in the House were not carried along by the leadership on the exercise. The then leadership was said to have predicated the initiative on the instruction from the ruling party on the strength of its control of the majority of the membership of the parliament. Thus the opposition parties¢ members were excluded from the chairmanship of the committees. Two, the Honourable members, it was alleged, were not fixed into the committees based on their areas of expertise and specialization. The selection was said to have been done on the basis of ¡man-know-man¢. Indeed some committees were considered as juicy. Therefore, it made sense for members with that mindset to scramble for such ¡juicy committees¢ whereas one committee is as ¡juicy¢ as the other, depending on how relevant members decide to make the committee in the scheme of things. Three, the composition of the committees was believed to have been lopsided in the sense that, while some members served in only two, there were many who served in six or seven. The chief whip of the House, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha, alluded to this lopsidedness in the committees¢ composition recently when he said: "We inherited an administration with a lopsided composition of committees. There were members of the House who were allocated two committees while others were in up to six or seven committees. That is not acceptable."

That could not have been acceptable because such a composition of the committees could only be a clog in the wheel of the progress of the House and must be reversed should the lawmakers make good their mandate to make the difference in the lives of Nigerians through adequate lawmaking and oversight of government activities.

The totality of the lopsided composition of the committees was that the members allocated two committees had very little to do while those in six or seven were apparently overburdened. The three flaws committed by the former House leadership in composing the now dissolved committees must have guided Speaker Bankole and his colleagues in the just concluded reconstitution. The lawmakers have set for themselves high targets in which the standing committees must play crucial roles if the targets must be realised.

The main target is accountability which seemed to have been lacking in governance in the country in the past, and for the very reason that the progress of Nigeria had been retarded notwithstanding her abundant human and natural resources. The realisation of this target has seen the House probing deeply into budgetary estimates that has paid off with the recovery of huge unspent funds while investigations have also been launched into the decay in some sectors of the economy. The second target will see the House collaborating with the executive arm under President Umaru Musa Yar¢Adua in executing the seven-point agenda as enunciated by the president to address the nation¢s infrastructural problem and the Niger Delta crisis. Fixing the problems of poor accountability, delayed infrastructure and the Niger Delta will require a great deal of investigations and underground work for which strong and reliable standing committees will come handy. The new committees have shown that, unlike what obtained in the last dispensation during which square pegs were put in round holes in constituting the committees, square pegs are now in square holes.

Under the new arrangement, requisite expertises of the lawmakers count in fixing them into the various committees. Consequently you find relevant professionals in the committees meeting their counterparts in the executive arm in furtherance of the input-output-outcome agenda of the House leadership. The situation is no longer one in which those in the executive take advantage of the wrong lawmaker being fixed into a committee and in the process compromise the House oversight activities.

To adequately tap the potentials of the 360-member House, nine percent of the former committee chairmen and deputies were dropped while 27 percent new chairmen and deputies emerged. 50 per cent of the former chairmen were reshuffled. To underscore the fact that competence and experience matter more than party affiliation in the House standing committees reconstitution, a member of the opposition, Hon.Habib Fashinro, is now the chairman of the legislative budget committee. Fashinro, a member of the Action Congress, AC, is from Lagos . Legislative budget committee is one of the 12 newly created committees in addition to the existing 72. The legislative budget committee matters a lot to the accountability agenda of the House as budget formulation and implementation monitoring falls directly under its portfolio. Hon. Fashinro bagged the committee chairmanship strictly on merit, having been a ranking member of the House who has built capacity as a third term lawmaker. Also to chair a committee is another opposition member, Hon. Abike Dabiri, also of the AC, who has been assigned to the committee on diaspora. It cannot be said that the amazon did not merit the office based on her credentials as a well travelled media person. Hon. Ita Enang retains the chairmanship of business and rules committee. The lawmaker is an experienced hand on the House business and rules, having served in the committee for the third consecutive term. He was the chairman of the committee under Hon. Masari leadership.

advertisement

Enang almost indispensation nature perhaps was the reason the committee and another remained when the former committees were dissolved weeks back to pave the way for the reconstitution. Taking charge at the appropriation committee is Hon. Adeseun, a ranking member and an accountant. With such a lawmaker versed in financial matters chairing this committee, Nigerians can expect an improvement in the treatment of the 2009 budget over the 2008 edition with the unprecedented record of unspent funds recovery. Hon. Enoch retains the chairmanship of the finance committee. To the credit of this committee is the uncovering of about N3 billion unremitted internally generated revenues by some government agencies in the last five years. Also retaining the chairmanship of the education committee is Hon. Lawan Farouk. A teacher by training, the chairmanship of the education committee seems fitting. It had been speculated at the heat of the House agitation for leadership change which he spearheaded that he took the action because he was targeting the appropriation committee chairmanship owing to the mindset that the committee was ¡lucrative¢. Perhaps this reshuffle is sufficient to permanently shut the months of those who engaged in that blackmail. Other ranking members of the House who bagged committee chairmanship include Hon. Bethel Amadi, former chief whip of the House and a lawyer who will now oversee the aviation committee while Hon. Ahmed Wadada will hold the forte at the capital market committee.

Hon. Dino Melaye, although a first term lawmaker, by the virtue of his activism in the House, retains the chairmanship of the information committee while Hon. Eyibo heads the media committee.

One novel aspect of the House committees reconstitution is that the chairmen of a number of important committees are now members of the media committee. This is a deliberate effort on the part of the House leadership to enable such important committees avail Nigerians information concerning the activities of their various committees as and when necessary.

Another high point of the House committees reconstitution is that no lawmaker will serve in more than the number of committees in which he can serve adequately. No stress. But the new dispensation will ensure that the lawmakers serving in the 84 committees give their best to the country. The long and short of what has happened is that the Bankole - led House is set to deliver real dividends of democracy to the people through the instrumentality of virile oversight by the revitalised standing committees. The contribution of the new committees to the success of the president"s seven-point agenda and overall national development will be no less satisfactory.

Abu, a public analyst writes from okenne, Kogi State