• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Sluggish start of 9th Senate threatens economic revamp – Analysts

Airport security: Senate calls for prosecution of drug cartel 

The sluggish take-off of the Ninth Senate five weeks after inauguration is heightening fears among analysts that Nigeria may not have arrived at a vibrant legislative process to foster an economic revamp of its fragile economy.

The analysts who spoke to BusinessDay hinged their fears on the inability of the Ninth Senate to set up its Rules and Business Committee, a failure that is now hampering bill presentation at the upper legislative chamber.

As at Thursday, July 18, 2019, the Ninth Senate had sat 10 times without presenting any bill and would likely embark on an annual recess from Thursday, July 25, and resume in September.

The case is, however, different in the House of Representatives where over 200 bills have already scaled through First Reading.

Coming at a time when Nigeria is tagged the poverty capital of the world, with some 91 million Nigerians living in extreme poverty, according to Brookings Institution, and 2,877 firms shutting down in just four years due to weak economy, analysts fear the lawmakers may not really understand the enormity of the situation at hand yet.

Eze Onyekpere, lead director, Centre for Social Justice, condemned the snail speed at which the Senate is moving since inauguration.

“My take is that the National Assembly should not behave like the President who is never ready to work but takes all the time in the world. I believe that since they were inaugurated over a month now, the first thing they should have done, the leadership should have set up major committees. By now, they should be settling down,” Onyekpere said in a telephone interview with BusinessDay.

“I expected all the committees to be in place so that proper legislative work can commence. Because after the First Reading, you need the Second Reading and commit every bill to a committee which will do the public hearing, submit its report for proper clause-by-clause consideration by Committee of the Whole,” he said.

Onyekpere said it was not just about a committee or two, but that he had expected all the committees to have “been in place by now so that before they proceed on their annual recess, the committees would have settled down and as soon as they come back (by September), they start serious work including the budget”.

“I totally agree that this should have been the time for them, before the temptations of politics come, to dispassionately consider those very crucial national bills that impact on the economy, politics and the governance system and get them out of the way in the shortest possible time so that we will take it up from there,” he said.

A document exclusively obtained by BusinessDay listed some of the critical bills in the Eighth Senate that were neither passed nor signed into law to include the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, Petroleum Industry Fiscal Bill, Petroleum Industry Administration Bill, Host Communities Development Fund Bill, Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, Gas Flaring (Prohibition) Bill, Budget Timeline Bill, National Housing Fund Bill, Ajaokuta Steel Company Completion Fund Bill, Industrial Development (Income Tax Relief) (Amendment) Bill, Stamp Duty Act (Amendment) Bill, among others.

BusinessDay reports that the Rules and Business Committee saddled with the responsibility of scheduling bills on the Order Paper is yet to be constituted by president of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, making it impossible for lawmakers to present bills.

This development is at variance with the House of Representatives where Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila has since set up an ad hoc committee on Rules and Business.

Specifically, Order 97 (2) of the Senate Standing Orders 2015 (as amended) lists the functions of the Committee to include scheduling business of the Senate and causing them to be printed on the Order Paper; allocation of time for the business of the Senate; monitoring the passage of Bills that are before the Senate and its committees; Senate organisation relative to its Rules and Procedure; interaction with State Houses of Assembly relative to Rules and Business of the Senate; workshops and seminars in respect of parliamentary practice and procedure for senators, as well as gazetting of Bills.

A lawmaker, who feels frustrated by the situation, expressed serious concern that this does not augur well for the economy and polity.

According to the ranking All Progressives Congress (APC) senator from South West, who spoke to BusinessDay on condition of anonymity, the lawmaking body ought to have hit the ground running from the outset.

“I have bills on critical areas such as financial and related services; oil and gas; manufacturing and industry; agricultural and related businesses, but these bills cannot be presented on the floor unless a Rules and Business Committee is set up just like in the House of Representatives. We have taken up the matter with the Senate leadership at our executive sessions but we kept getting endless assurances,” the senator lamented.

Johnson Chukwu, managing director, Cowry Assets, asked the National Assembly to prioritise the amendment of the Fiscal Responsibility Act as well as legal reforms that would set timeline for commercial cases.

“I expect lawmakers to come up with bills to revise the current privatisation of the framework of the electricity industry. I expect them to come up with a bill that will institutionalise Public Private Partnership (PPP) that will revise the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) guidelines and simplify it so as to encourage more private sectors to go in to infrastructural development,” Chukwu told BusinessDay.

“Also, I expect them to review the Fiscal Responsibility Act and make sanctionable if government fails to submit the budget within the time stipulated in the Act. They should also look at reviewing our commercial adjudication process to give special courts to fasten the process of settling commercial disputes and set timelines for conclusion of commercial cases just like we have for political cases,” he said.

Toeing a similar line, Raphael Agama, a constitutional lawyer, expressed concern that the development could affect smooth consideration of the 2020 budget.

He said the best thing for the Ninth Senate was to ensure that all the committees are in place so that they could run without hitches.

“If that is not done, then it doesn’t portend any good for our democracy. And because of that, other things will be affected because by the time that committee is in place, it will be flooded with a lot of work and it is left for them to choose which one to do or not to do,” Agama said.