House Committees At Work

 

The engine room of legislative achievements in the House of Representatives is the committee system through which issues are closely x-rayed and the general house guided. That system has been subjected to stress for some time by the same legislators who are supposed to make it work. There have been too many cases of committees that have simply neglected their responsibilities, leaving the House in a quandary. The leadership of the House has had to threaten sanctions against 57 out of the 89 standing committees for laxity, especially in relation to their failure to submit reports on the pace of budget implementation in their oversight ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) for 2014. That information is required to enable the House make informed contributions to the 2014 budget.
This wouldn’t be the first time that standing committees of the House were playing
truant. The view held by the public has been that the committee system is an avenue for fleecing the country through blackmail. There had been instances in the past where committee members constituted themselves into contractors and favour-seekers in the very MDAs they were supposed to oversee.
It is perhaps unfair to categorise all House committees as constituted by indolent legislators. Lawmaking is serious business. Some of our legislators can hold their own against the best from any other part of the world. But we are looking at a defective system of patronages and fixations about unearned entitlements. This is not a disease peculiar to the legislature alone, for it is rife in the general society itself. But the least we expect of our legislature is to be a trustworthy watchdog over the MDAs it supervises.
With a 64 per cent truancy rate by committees, it is not difficult to see the quandary the House leadership has been put into. With elections coming up next year, the seats of many lawmakers are likely to be empty on most of the days. However, there is a critical responsibility to be carried out in the shape of the 2014 budget. That is a task that deserves the best shot of the legislature.
The House leadership should find the courage to shake up committees that are not performing optimally or, rather, those performing below expectation. In spite of the gale of political activities sweeping through the House of Representatives – which may account for the leadership’s tardiness in dealing with truancy – Speaker Tambuwal and his lieutenants must summon courage to live up to their oath of office and do whatever is necessary to make the standing committees responsive to the yearnings of Nigerians. They must be reined in before they do lasting damage.