Senators violate Standing Orders in desperate scramble for ‘juicy’ committees

In the face of current economic challenges, Nigerian Senators are said to be forcing their way into what they see as ‘juicy’ committees, thereby violating those rules they set by themselves to guide activities at the red chamber.

BusinessDay finds for instance, that one of the ‘juicy’ committees: the Tertiary Institution and TETFund, now has 21 members as against 12 when it was inaugurated in 2015, a situation which the Senate leadership frowns at.

The current composition violates Order 95 (1) of the Senate Standing Orders, 2015 (as amended) which stipulates that “Membership of all Committees shall not be less than nine and not more than 13 senators”.

Committees are termed ‘juicy’ because of their propensity for corrupt enrichment of members by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) under their purview. ‘Juicy’ committees have also been found over the years to encourage favouritism and attract other gains, like employment opportunities, and even contracts awards, as against merit.

TETFund was established as an intervention agency under the TETFund ACT – Tertiary Education Trust Fund (Establishment, etc) Act, 2011; charged with the responsibility for managing, disbursing and monitoring the education tax to public tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

The Fund administers the tax imposed by the Act and disburses the amount to tertiary educational institutions at Federal and State levels. It also monitors the projects executed with the funds allocated to the beneficiaries.

In the Votes and Proceedings of November 18, 2015 seen by BusinessDay, the Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFUND comprised 12 members and included; Binta Garba as Chairman and Tijani Kaura as Vice. Other members were: Emmanuel Bwacha, Mohammed Shittu, Oluremi Tinubu, Yele Omogunwa, Clifford Ordia, John Enoh, Sam Egwu, Enyinnaya Abaribe, Joshua Dariye and Salihu Hussain, who was later sacked in December by an Appeal Court.

Later, Senate President Bukola Saraki moved the Chairman of the committee, Garba, to Women Affairs, and replaced her with Barau Jibrin; in a reshuffling of committee heads in July 2016.

But BusinessDay discovered that members of the TEFTFUND panel had increased from 12 to 21 as contained in the committee’s report on the National Open University of Nigeria Act (Amendment) Bill, considered at the Senate recently.

The nine additional members include: Danjuma Goje, Aliyu Wamakko, Shaaba Lafiagi, Suleiman Nazif, Kabiru Gaya, Foster Ogola, Magnus Abe, Baba Kaka Garbai and Garba (who was earlier moved to chair Women Affairs panel).

It was gathered that the leadership of the Senate had become uncomfortable with a development where many senators forced themselves into membership of ‘juicy’ committees they were not originally posted to.

To this end, the leadership of the Red Chamber is set to reshuffle panels before the next recess.

The Senate will embark on recess by the end of this month.

Senate President Bukola Saraki who disclosed this last week at plenary, expressed concern that lawmakers were forcing their ways into committees they were not originally posted to.

Saraki was responding to an observation by Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, that the report of the Committee on Tertiary Education was signed by 12 out of 21 members; a development, he said, was unhealthy for the institution.

Saraki announced that the leadership would carry out a ‘clean up’ exercise that would entail a major rejigging of its committee.

“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,” Saraki said.

If the reshuffling is carried out, it will be the third time Saraki would have reshuffled standing committees since inauguration of the Eighth Senate on June 9, 2015.

In July 2016, he rejigged standing committees, giving his outspoken critics like Kabiru Marafa, Oluremi Tinubu and Suleiman Hukunyi ‘juicy’ positions.

Similarly, in January 2017, the Senate President created three new committes and reshuffled the chairmanship of two others.

Currently, there are 68 standing committees in the Senate.

Observers are keen to see if the pending reshuffling of committees would affect the chairman Senate Public Accounts Committee, Andy Uba.

Following his defection from the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in February this year, Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio had said the opposition party would reclaim Uba’s committee appointment.
Traditionally, chairmanship of the ‘juicy’ committee had been reserved for the opposition party, as witnessed in the Sixth and Seventh Senate, where the Public Accounts Committee was chaired by Ahmad Lawan.

Some of the ‘juicy’ committees and their chairmen include: Agriculture (Abdullahi Adamu); Appropriations (Danjuma Goje); Tertiary Education and TETFUND (Jibrin Barau); Enyinnaya Abaribe (Power); Customs (Hope Uzodinma); Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions (Rafiu Ibrahim); Gas (Bassey Akpan); Petroleum Upstream (Tayo Alasoadura); Kabir Marafa (Downstream), Niger Delta (Peter Nwaoboshi), INEC (Suleiman Nazif), Environment (Remi Tinubu) among others.

 

OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja