FOLLOWING the outcry over the alleged jumbo salaries of members of the National Assembly and the need to reduce the cost of governance, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, yesterday, inaugurated a 20-man committee to carry out an assessment on what is required to run the National Assembly.
Inaugurating the committee, Dogara charged the members made up of international development partners like the Department for International Development (DFID) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), professional bodies like the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Budget Office, Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and former National Assembly members to take a holistic view on what is needed to run the National Assembly.
He said that the effective running of the legislature would be based on actual needs of the institution as an arm of government, pointing out that there is no study or assessment of what the legislature needs to perform optimally in Nigeria.
His words: “We have all been making, at best, educated guesswork on whether the legislature is adequately funded or not. An appropriate needs assessment may well find out that the legislature in Nigeria is over-funded or that it is underfunded.
“The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 has vested the law making powers of the Federation in the National Assembly, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Constitution further empowers the National Assembly to conduct investigations into the conduct of affairs of any person, authority, ministry or government department charged or intended to be charged with the duty and responsibility for executing or administering laws enacted by the National Assembly; disbursing or administering money’s appropriated or to be appropriated by the National Assembly.
“Of course, these powers can be exercised only for the purpose of making laws and to correct defects in existing laws and to expose corruption, inefficiency or waste in the execution or administration of laws within its legislative competence and in the disbursement or administration of funds appropriated by it.”
He said that there should be an empirical and objective study to determine the things needed for effective legislation even as he urged the committee to make comparative study of the cost of running legislatures in other parts of the world.
‘’You should in the course of your work also make a comparative study of the cost of running legislatures in other relevant jurisdictions. These are only suggestions as you should feel free to adopt any methodology you deem fit in carrying out this assignment.”
Describing the legislature as the vanguard of democracy and a critical watchdog of the interests and aspirations of the people, Dogara said, ‘’if the legislature is undermined to the point that it becomes ineffective, our entire democratic experiment will face imminent danger of failure and destruction.”
We’ll cut waste – Odusile
Speaking to Saturday Vanguard, a member of the committee and National President of the NUJ, Waheed Odusile, commended the speaker and the leadership of the House of Representatives for constituting the committee and assured that the committee would cut any existing waste in the running of government.
The committee is chaired by Mr Clement Nwankwo of the Policy and Legal Advocay Centre (PLAC). Other members include the NBA President, Mr Austin Alegeh; ICAN President, Olufemi Deru; Senator Ita Enang, and Rep Albert Sam-Tsokwa.
The committee has three months to submit its report.
