Dogara warns against creation of new agencies

Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House of Representatives on Tuesday urged the House to focus more on amendment of existing government agencies by giving them additional functions, rather than establishing new ones.

The Speaker gave the charge while declaring open the public hearing on four bills namely: A bill for an Act to amend the National Broadcasting Commission Act; a bill for an Act to provide for the regulation and conduct of broadcasting profession in Nigeria; a bill for an Act to repeal Nigerian Films Corporation and re-enact the Nigerian films Commission and a bill for an Act to establish the National Agency for Ethics and Values.

According to Dogara, one of the bills proposes to insert to address the issues of competition, monopoly and wholesale offer in our broadcasting market while another is on the proposed Federal Competition bill pending at the Committee of Whole of the House.

“I must advise that as a parliament we must weigh very carefully the cost of setting up new Government Agencies especially during this period of economic recession.

“Sometimes instead of establishing new agencies we may just amend the laws setting up similar existing agencies by incorporating the mandate of the new agencies in the old one.

“This is because to set up a new bureaucracy with complement of Directors, offices, equipment may be unnecessary.

The public hearing was aimed at collectively analysing the content of four bills that have passed second reading at plenary and subsequently referred to the Committee for further legislative action.

He explained that public hearing is one of the processes of lawmaking organized by institutional instrument of legislatures for the purpose of gathering views from the general public to enhance quality of laws coming out of our parliament for better service delivery and proper coordination of our society.