The number of standing committees in the House of Representatives will increase from 89 to 95 anytime soon, Daily Trust learnt yesterday.
Sources familiar with the matter told Daily Trust that there are great expectations from those that helped Yakubu Dogara to emerge House Speaker on June 9.
Our sources said the Speaker had already approved a proposal to raise the number of the committees to 95 to meet those expectations.
The increase is coming at a time when President Buhari is planning to reduce the number of ministries and agencies in an effort to run a slim government.
He had already started with the NNPC where he had merged eight directorates into four.
The Speaker himself on June 23 said committees with duplicating functions would to be merged, streamlined or scrapped.
“One of the identified problems of investigative hearings and oversight of the Executive Arm is the multiplicity of committees with overlapping jurisdiction on the same subject matter. This has led to a situation where more than one committee is handling the same subject matter. Invitations are sent to the same officials of government by different committees on the same subject,” Dogara said while presenting the 8th House legislative agenda.
However, multiple sources in the House yesterday said the Speaker has since reversed himself to increase the committees to 95.
Based on the new arrangement, it was learnt, some House committees will be divided into two or three while new ones are to be created “all in an attempt to create job for the boys,” said one of the lawmakers who spoke to Daily Trust in confidence.
It was gathered that the committee on education will now be split into three – primary, secondary and tertiary education, while that on agriculture would be divided into two mechanised and rudimentary agriculture.
“You see, this is a statement of fact. What he wants to do is just to give his supporters committees at all cost. He promised various people chairmanship of committees, so he must fulfil that.
“But to me, I think we must stick to the policy of the federal government on reduction of cost,” said one of the lawmakers.
A new committee, which will oversee activities of certain regulatory agencies such as the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), will be created, sources said.
The committee will ensure the approval of any new regulation by such commissions before implementation.
However, if the committee fails to communicate to the commissions three months after receiving their proposal, they are free to go ahead with implementation.
Further inquiries by Daily Trust revealed that unlike before when House committees were categorized into about five groups, they will now be in only three categories, A, B and C, and each member will be given the opportunity to select two committees to serve on.
Already, members of the House were given forms to fill in which they would indicate their preference, but sources said it was all formalities as some committee chairmen have already been picked based on the promises the speaker made to some lawmakers.
The selection committee, which is responsible for constituting the committees and chaired by Dogara, met on Tuesday last week, where it decided on the modalities to follow in setting up the committees.
But it was learnt that the issue of increasing the number of committees was not discussed there as it is the exclusive preserve of the speaker.
Based on what obtained during the time of Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, where each committee was given N7 million quarterly as running cost, the 95 committees under Dogara may end up gulping N2.66 billion annually. But it is not clear if Dogara will retain Tambuwal’s style.
It was gathered that during the inception of the current democratic dispensation in 1999, the Fourth House under former Speaker Umar Ghali Na’abba had less than 20 committees, but that the number of the House panels started increasing during the tenure of Aminu Bello Masari current Katsina State governor, who served as speaker between 2003 and 2007.
Under Dimeji Bankole in 2007, it was learnt that the number of committees increased to more than 50, while during Tambuwal, the House maintained 89 committees.
But checks by Daily Trust showed that the United States House of Representatives with 435 members currently has 21 congressional committees, 20 of which are standing committees and one select committee. All but three committees, the Budget Committee, the Ethics Committee, and the House Administration Committee, are subdivided into subcommittees, each with its own leadership.
Daily Trust findings further revealed that the modern US House committees were brought into existence through the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, which reduced the number of committees from 48 to 19, as well as restructured their jurisdictions.
When contacted, Dogara’s spokesman Turaki Hassan referred our reporter to the chairman of the House ad-hoc committee on media Rep Sani Zorro for reaction as the matter was purely a House affair.
However, efforts to reach Zorro were unsuccessful as calls put to his phone number were not returned.
But Zorro had told journalists last week during a media briefing that the process of constituting the House committees had begun.
Also, attempts to get reaction from a member of the media committee Rep Abdulrazak Namdas failed as his phone was switched off at about 7:30pm.
