The Senate
announced on Thursday that it would carry out a ‘clean up’ exercise that would
entail a major rejigging of its committee system.The Senate currently has a
total
number of 68 committees.
Senate
President Abubakar Bukola Saraki, who made the announcement, said that the exercise
would go a long way in assisting the upper chamber to clean up its committee
system.The clean up, according to Saraki, would be done before the Senate
proceeds on its end of session holiday in August.
Saraki was
responding to an observation made by the Deputy President, Ike Ekweremadu that
the structure of committees at the moment had become very unhealthy.Ekweremadu
drew his observation from the report presented by the Senate committee on
Tertiary Education, during which he noted that of the 22 members of the
committee, only 12 signed the report.
He said that
it was unusual and unwieldy for the Senate to continue to tolerate the
development.“We must ensure that Senators are placed in the number of
committees that they can handle,” he said.Saraki said: “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 ensure that the right thing is done.”
The last
time the Senate reshuffled its committees was in 2016 when many Senators who
hitherto were not accommodated in ‘juicy’ committees were appointed as
chairmen. The committee system was subsequently in January 2017 slightly
adjusted when it created three new committees and reshuffled the chairmanship
of two others.
A source
disclosed that contrary to the Senate Standing Rule which pegged the maximum
membership of committees at 11, many committees particularly those considered
as ‘juicy’ now have as many as 22 to 25 members.
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