With the 2012 budget laid before the House of Representatives, the leadership has insisted that the capital budget component must be fully implemented. The House hopes to use its committees for effective oversight to achieve the feat. In this piece, VICTOR OLUWASEGUN and DELE ANOFI present the views of committees’ chairmen on how they hope to make Ministries, Departments and Agencies live up to expectation. They also speak on issues responsible for the failure of most committees in the past.
Zakari Mohammed- (Media and Public Affairs)
Thoroughness in our oversight function is a tool
we intend to use to achieve our legislative agenda. When funds are appropriated, they should follow up to see if those funds are judiciously applied; that is what brings about development. The authority to appropriate funds for the running of the country lies with the National Assembly. We give the authority for spending. If they bring in a budget here and we agreed on certain amount for certain sectors, we are constitutionally empowered to find out whether the money is well applied. In some cases, if the money cannot meet the realities on ground, that is when you find out that extra budgetary provisions are made. The 7th assembly will make sure that they follow closely the activities of Ministries, Departments and Agencies to make sure that the budget is not abused but implemented in conformity with agreed terms so that the Nigerian people will be the best for it. What Nigerians should expect is that capital expenditure supersedes the recurrent expenditure in our budgets. The situation that makes recurrent get about 75 per cent of the budget will be reversed. We believe it should be the other way round, that emphasis should be placed on capital budget where you have road networks, infrastructure development. The recurrent expenditure are normal routine spending, so we have to reverse the trend and that is exactly what we stand for in the 7th Assembly.
Moruf Akinderu-Fatai
(Legislative Compliance)
It is our intention to make sure that directives are followed to the letter. We are going to ensure that contrary to what obtained in the past; resolutions of the House are complied with. This will give the House in particular and the Parliament as a whole its deserved respect.
“On the issue of committees approaching MDAs for assistance, yes, it does happen but we have to discourage it because one of our most important duties is to carry out oversight functions. And when you oversight people, you are supposed to come with clean hands. Where there’s confusion is a situation whereby the Ministry or the organization you are to oversight calls the committee members stating that this is what they want to do and expects the committee’s commitment and support. In a situation like that, who pays for such? So, the confusion begins by the time such an establishment is invited by the House to defend allegations or its budget. It is my belief and the resolution of this 7th Assembly to avoid such pitfalls because we all know the repercussions if we are actually out to serve our people. Remember that we are not unaware that the people are accusing us of being where we are today because we failed to do our job conscientiously. Along the line, we would get to a point where we should be able to do our job as expected, that mean keeping the integrity of this House without compromise, anything other than that is as good as short-changing the people of Nigeria.
Nnenna Elendu Ukeje (Foreign Affairs)
The House Committee on Foreign Affairs, fortunately for us, came at the beginning of a new foreign policy thrust – the African-oriented policy to citizens-based policy under Ojo Madueke to a policy that has an economic base. Nigeria is at a level where we are looking at diversification of our oil-based economy. The challenges before this committee right now are quite many. We have the issues al-Qeada vis-à-vis what it has to do with Boko Haram and the National Security, we are looking at the issue of piracy, we’re looking at strengthening and entrenching our relationship with the United States with regards to trade, good governance and so on and so forth. And of course we are looking at strengthening Nigeria so that it retains its position as the leader of Africa. We also want to increase our visibility in places like AU and the UN. Basically, this committee has drawn up an agenda that we intend to go through one after the other. On House members asking MDAs for assistance, she said: “It is going to be very difficult for you to carry out effective oversight over an MDA or head of parastatal that has supported you. As they say, he who pays the piper dictates the tune. Now, in our legislative agenda, it’s very clear that our oversight will not only be inspections, it will be oversight on policies and appropriation. There’s also a template for what we are doing on oversight as well. So, whether or not members go to see their MDAs, we will be compelled by the rules of the 7th Assembly to deliver on our oversight.
Jumoke Okoya-Thomas (Bureau of Public Pro-curement-Due Process)
“There is no denying the sensitivity of the House Committee on Bureau of Public Procurement. We all know that this is all about due process. Our priority is to ensure that Nigerians get maximum benefit from government procurement initiatives through the elimination of waste and fraud. We are quite aware of our duties and we know we will be stepping on toes. We won’t mind that as we have resolved to do the right thing for the greater majority of Nigerians. It is not going to be business as usual because as mandated by the leadership of the House, we are going to do our work diligently.
“The issue of members approaching MDAs for one form of help or the other can happen. But I have never heard of it. That is not to say we cannot provide measures against such occurrence. This committee, being a very sensitive body, has its own budgetary allocation because our job is enormous. Thus, we have option of partnering with the World Bank and other agencies if the need arises; so we have no need to go cap-in-hand begging for financial support from MDAs we are over-sighting. If we have to do that, then we would have compromised the essence of being saddled with national responsibility. How do we then beat our chest and say we have done the best for the people of this country? That would be compromising our integrity.
Fort Dike (Inter/Intra-Party relationships)
We are being guided by the fact that democracy should also be about internal processes in the parties, that is how candidates emerge. So as political parties clamour for free and fair election, it is logical that they have to democratize their internal democratic processes so that there won’t be imposition of candidates. As part of the democratic institutions, they ought to democratize their own processes of bringing out candidates to pave way for the broader process to improve on. Most importantly, we seem to have forgotten the ideals of democracy in this country in relation to parties. We don’t have independent candidature in this country which means that every elected person from the president down to local government councillor must emerge on a platform of a party. The implication is that the basis of choice by the electorate is a comparison of what each party promises to do for the electorate which is the party’s manifesto. As such, we will work towards making political parties accountable to their manifestoes in such a way that the manifestoes would become more important to parties and the candidates than what we are seeing now. The committee will work very assiduously to bring about these ideal democratic processes in Nigeria.
Oyetunde Ojo
(Communications)
Communication is in our society. Everybody needs communication nowadays in a modern age to avoid doing anything with complications. There have been a lot of issues in terms of telephone subscribers and the major operators. When you talk about MTN, Glo, Etisalat, Airtel, you even talk about the watchdog itself which is the NCC. Finally you talk about the Ministry of Communications Technology which is the overall in charge of all the operators. We’ve seen one or two areas which we hope to address. If you look at the NCC Act, the NCC Act was done in 2003. 2003 till date is a long time. That needs to be reviewed and a lot of things need to be put in place. There will be some certain review which we are going to bring to the House to look at so that it will benefit all Nigerians. On Reps asking MDAs for hand-outs in whatever form, Ojo said based on the stance of the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, no one would indulge in such. “Before anyone would compromise the House on oversight, it is necessary to observe the leadership style of the Speaker. He has told us what the agenda of the House is. And if our leader doesn’t do that, I don’t think any chairman of a committee will dare to indulge in such.
Bush Alebiosu (Treaties and Agreements)
“Our goal is to make a positive impact on Nigerians and the only way to do that through our committee is to carry out our mandate with dignity and sincerity of purpose. We know that treaties and agreements between Nigeria and other countries are very significant as we strive to develop and grow socio-economically and advance our democracy in our attempts to strengthen our political institutions. We would want to make a difference by ensuring that Nigerians are not short-changed in these treaties and agreements.
“The question of committees soliciting for financial assistance from the MDAs where they are to perform oversight functions is strange to me. I have not witnessed one and I have not seen any case reported. The leadership of a body often times reflects the activities of its subordinates. With the kind of leadership we have in the current House of Representatives, that scenario is not likely to occur because integrity and respect for the institution are key guiding principles. There may be such perception in the public domain, but it‘s part of challenges confronting parliaments all over the world. The British parliament, American even the Chinese parliaments have had issues in recent past, but those are some of the realities of legislature. This House will not tilt towards such demeaning level.
Ifedayo Abegunde (Disa-ster and Emergency Preparedness)
NEMA is an organization that responds to emergency and disaster. The end of it is that efficiency of NEMA will be based on how prepared the parastatal is when there is a disaster or emergency situation. NEMA is national and there are organizations that are supposed to be on ground functioning very well which is why we have SEMA at the state level and LEMA at the local level. These other arms of emergency as opposed to the central organisation have not been functioning well and the reason is that probably the states has not thought about it wisely so what we are talking about is that we want to walk very closely with the DG to make sure that all those that are supposed to have apparatus on ground according to the Act that brought NEMA into existence should be there. This way, when issues start, those people in the state and local government would be well prepared,. They should have materials in their storage so that everything doesn’t have to come from Abuja. Those are the areas we are looking into: to be sure of effectiveness of LEMA and SEMA and also we are intending to do our oversight function in such a way that it will affect the entire stakeholders that we are supposed to do over sight upon.”
While responding to the allegation that committees are made ineffective by their chairmen going to the MDAs to ask for support, he said: “In this 7th Assembly, we have a legislative agenda and we have said it that no chairman or member of committee should ever go to a minister or DG’s office waiting to sit down, no, it is insulting. We are the one over sighting them. It happened before and now our Speaker, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal has made it very clear to us that if you go there and you are disgraced and we hear about it in the House, we will exert disciplinary action. If you have to over sight a particular agency or parastatal and you start begging or sitting in the office as if you are a little boy, it is wrong because we are higher in protocol than them.
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