Adefaye, Agbakoba, Daudu, others task NASS on quality legislation
By Ben Agande & Emma Ovuakporie
MEMBERS of the National Assembly have been urged to raise the bar on quality legislation and oversight functions to win the confidence of the citizenry, diffuse strident criticisms and steer the nation to the path of development.
Making the charge Thursday, Mr. Gbenga Adefaye, President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, NGE; Chief Joseph Daudu (SAN), President, Nigeria Bar Association, NBA; Mr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), former NBA President; and Mr. Yomi Ogunbiyi, former Clerk of the National Assembly, said the legislature had a major role in transforming the country.
They all spoke at the inauguration of the 89 Special and Standing Committees of the House of Representatives at the National Assembly, Abuja.
NGE President and Editor-in-chief of Vanguard Newspapers, Mr. Gbenga Adefaye, commended the Speaker for inviting the Guild to the ceremony, promising that the NGE “will work with the legislature and build a partnership with which we can develop this country together.”
Agbakoba, whose speech on public expectations from the National Assembly drew intermittent applause from members of the House as well as the cream of visitors, told the legislators that the criticism of the National Assembly could be reversed if the output was increased, adding that what Nigerians needed from the National Assembly was development which they were not getting.
Cross section of Committee Chairmen during the Inauguration of House of Representatives Committees at the National Assembly in Abuja on Thursday. Photo : Gbemiga Olamikan
He said there was need for the legislators to broaden their knowledge on all fields to effectively carry out oversight functions and make robust laws.
Calling for the scrapping of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, since it had demonstrated consistently that it was not ready to operate transparently and had constituted itself into a drain pipe in the nation’s economy, Agbakoba said: “How much money is made from the petroleum industry? The present sharing arrangement of 40/60 between the NNPC and the international oil company is not working for Nigeria. It is a huge fraud and these are questions that Nigerians expect the National Assembly to ask the NNPC.”
Multinationals’ deals
Giving further insight on how international oil companies shortchange Nigerian economy, the erudite lawyer said four areas stood out in this nefarious scheme, and identified them as legal services, banking, insurance and shipping.
He regretted that while ExxonMobil, for instance, spent over $1 billion for its legal services in a year, no Nigerian law firm was patronised, while out of the over 5,000 ships plying Nigerian waters ferrying crude, no Nigerian ship was involved in the lifting of the crude.
On his part, Daudu told the lawmakers that Nigerians recognised the strategic importance of the National Assembly. He said: “That is why you get accolade and criticisms on what you do.”
He, however, noted that while the salary of the legislature was not the concern of an average Nigerian, such salaries and income should be justified by the lawmakers’ output. “Time has come for the legislature to churn our legislation that will standardise development in the country. The machinery for speedy legislation must be well oiled.”
Relatedly, Ogunbiyi, in a paper entitled Strengthening the Effectiveness of the Committee System, decried the proliferation of committees in the National Assembly which, he said, weakened the performance of the committees.
He also lamented the high turn over of legislators at each legislative session, saying “when you have a legislature where members begin from the beginning every four years, there can be no continuity. You cannot have professional legislature without professional legislators.”
Ogunbiyi called on the leadership of the House of Representatives to allow the committees free hand to run their affairs and urged that each committee should provide an outlay of its programme at the beginning of each year as well as provide a briefing of its accomplishment to allow for assessment.
We have the right blend- Speaker
Earlier in his speech, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Aminu Tambuwal, said the decision to inaugurate all the committees on a single day “highlights our determina-tion to ensure they commence work immediately without dwelling on fanfares and focusing on the substance and seriousness of legislative business.”
According to Tambuwal, the constitution of the committees has been painstaking and the body of principal officers and the selection committee took time to ensure that they got the right blend in the leadership and membership of the committees.
He said: “In constituting the leadership and membership of the Committees, we have made every effort to be fair and ensure that the diversity of skills, knowledge and experience endowed in this House are appropriately deployed and assigned. I would like to remind the chairmen, their deputies and indeed all members of the committees that we made commitments in the Legislative Agenda we adopted for the Seventh House of Representatives, to do things differently.
“It is very germane to the hopes and aspirations of our people who truly deserve quality representation, which is necessary for a rapid economic recovery and growth, and the improvement of their standard of living and quality of life.
“We urge the leadership to operate democratically and to involve their members in the affairs of the committees. May I also emphasise that the Staff of Committees are critical and indispensable in the workings of the committees. Chairmen and members must maximise the experience and institutional knowledge of the staff to complement and guide the work of the committees.”
Yesterday’s inauguration was attended by former Speakers, Ghali Umar Na’Abba, Aminu Bello Masari, Patricia Etteh and Agunwa Anakwe, Service Chiefs and the Inspector-General of Police, ministers, the chairmen of the Peoples Democratic Party, Action Congress of Nigeria, and All Progressive Grand Alliance.
