Group to Abbas: Reduce standing committees from 109 to 60 — we need quality not quantity

The African Parliamentary Advocacy and Reform Group (APARG) has asked Tajudeen Abbas, speaker of the house of representatives, not to increase the number of standing committees in the green chamber to 145.

The speaker is scheduled to announce the composition of the house standing committees on Thursday.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Chibuzo Okereke, director of APARG, said the group received reports that Abbas is planning to increase the house standing committees from 109 to 145.

Okereke said increasing the number of the committees rather than the quality will result in a “serious decline in legislative assertiveness”.

“We have credible information suggesting that the 10th house of representatives may have further increased the number of standing committees from the ninth house of reps 109 to an alleged outrageous 145 standing committees,” the statement reads.

“The right honourable speaker may note that over the years especially since 1999 and the 4th national assembly, the house of representatives standing committees have been progressively fragmented, proliferated and balkanised with each new assembly largely due to political considerations and patronage over legislative effectiveness and productivity.

“The trends in political decisions to progressively increase the quantity of the standing committees rather than the quality of the committees have resulted in a serious decline in legislative assertiveness, effectiveness, productivity and value for money in public service delivery arising from weak oversight design, low participation of Members in the numerous perceived low-grade committees, conflicts in the exercise of legislative oversight powers on executive agencies, committees’ incapacity, distress on the limited infrastructure for committee meetings and continuous low perception of citizens on the significance of the governance role of the national assembly to Nigerians.

“What is worst Mr speaker, is that most of the committees due to the scarce resources of the institution of the national assembly, are overburdened and risk nearly 100 percent dependence on the executive MDAs which they oversight as a source for operational survival in performing their constitutional functions.”

Okereke said the excessive fragmentation and “proliferation” of the committee system without consideration of the important principles of robustness and effectiveness, weaken the house of representatives.

“An empirical analysis of the 109 standing committees of the ninth house of representatives shows that several of the committees did not hold any meetings nor performed any significant legislative activities under their committees throughout the life span of the ninth assembly while some of them held meetings only about three times in the entire four years,” Okereke said.

Okereke said Abbas should “drastically reduce” the existing 109 committees to about 60 for “effective management, efficiency and measured productivity”.