STILL ON NASS COMMITTEES: ALL CHIEFS, NO INDIANS 

Josef Omorotionmwan argues that many of the committees in the National Assembly are unnecessary

One institution that is largely misunderstood is the Legislature. The legislator is constantly in a dilemma, particularly when it comes to remuneration for his services. Where his pay is too high he is seen as a tax-eating parasite – overpaid and underworked. Where his pay is low, and even where he volunteers free service, people simply conclude that he must be getting something by the side. 

We have always argued, though, that the remuneration of the legislator must be commensurate with the service he renders. It must be decent enough to enable him compete with his counterparts in other pursuits. After all they all go to the same markets and their children attend the same schools.

Each time we observed that our legislators were becoming overbearing by drawing very high allowances and other humongous remunerations, we have been in the vanguard, agitating for their reasonableness. 

Again, we have always maintained that the dog of the president is also the president of dogs. This is our way of saying that the legislator’s aide should be like the legislator. The business of legislation is not just a job, it is an adventure. The success of a legislator begins and ends with the quality of the aides he engages.

An ideal legislator’s aide is a technocrat, is a sound professional, capable of writing bold proposals that always put his boss on top. He is capable of representing the boss on occasions. An investment on the good legislative aide is not wasted. Rather, it is an asset. The legislature is veritable breeding ground for future leaders. 

With happy illustration, we are reminded that one of the best performing Senators in the current 10th Senate is Senator Nadir Imasuen (Edo South Senatorial district). He was an aide to senator Matthew Urhoghide. That’s a sweet transition; That feat was not attained by accident but by design. It would not have happened if Urhoghide had picked a petrol attendant as an aide. 

Is anyone still wondering why Urhoghide was always on top of his elements despite being in opposition? See the enviable height to which he took the Senate public accounts committee? This is the only committee who’s chairmanship is by law assigned to the opposition. The moral message here is that when it comes to engaging legislative aides, legislators have no alternative but to go for the best.

On the debit side, we insist that the countless number of committees of the National Assembly constitutes a bundle of waste. Before 2015 when we lost count, 

the number of standing committees in the House of Representatives had imploded in geometric progression to 96, regardless of the cost implication. Add to this, about 24 Special and Ad-hoc Committees that spring up from time to time; and you will find that every member of the House is a Committee Chairman or Vice-Chairman. That’s what we call all Chiefs, no Indians.

Evidently, it would be impossible for all legislators to consider all proposals that pour into the National Assembly every session, hence the introduction of the committee system, which enables the legislature to break up its work-load into smaller and more manageable parts. Standing Committees are supposed to be permanent groups organised along policy lines. They last from one session to the other and from one assembly to the next.

The importance of committees in any parliament and more so, in a presidential dispensation cannot be overemphasised. The 28th President of the US, Woodrow Wilson, once described committees as “little legislatures”.

According to him, “The House sits, not for serious discussions, but to sanction the conclusions of its committees as rapidly as possible. It legislates in the committee rooms; not by the deliberation of majorities but by the resolutions of specially commissioned minorities: so that it is not far from the truth to say that legislature in session is legislature on public exhibition while the legislature in its committee room is legislature at work.”

Both chambers of the National Assembly have seemingly parallel committee structures, although they sometimes use different nomenclatures. For instance, the Committee on External Affairs in the House of Representatives is called the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate. Ideally, because of its smaller size, the Senate should group committees of similar subjects. Commerce and industry, transport and aviation, appropriation and finance, provide few examples of convenient groupings.

The existence of too many committees is an open invitation to confusion and waste at a time when everybody is yearning for lean government. Where a legislator is appointed to too many committees, his attention becomes divided among the committees that it is impossible to find a convenient time at which all members of a particular committee may meet.

Again, the legislator’s effort becomes fragmented and distributed not only among too many problems but also among problems too varied in nature that his time and effort are frequently wasted by the duplication of committee functions.

When the number of committees is too large and their jurisdictions get too narrow, it becomes impossible for the legislature and the legislator to see any issue in its fullness – to pull the pieces together and frame coherent, comprehensive policies in broad areas of public concern. Policies become fragmented and disjointed, as policy interrelationships  get lost in the process. And as the jurisdiction of committees cannot always be clearly drawn in such a situation, disputes would normally arise over which group should handle certain measures.

We see in the present arrangement, an attempt to trivialise committee appointments. Committee chairmanship is not another job for the boys.

We hear of a case where a freshman in the current House of Representatives is a Chairman of one committee and Vice-Chairman of another. Where else in an existing parliament can committee chairmanship be so cheapened, except in Nigeria? And what does it do to the ranking order, which parliaments covet so much?

With 96 standing committees in a chamber of just 360 members, it is not unusual to find one legislator belonging to six committees and sometimes more. The cost of running 96 Committees in a single year would ordinarily sustain the committee system, with utmost efficiency, for the four years life span of an entire parliament in an orderly structure.

Even with just 22 standing committees in the Senate and 27 in the House of Representatives during the Second Republic, there was often considerable over-lap and duplication of functions, particularly in carrying out the oversight responsibilities.

If you are creating a committee on aviation at a time when the Ministry of Aviation has been abolished, such committee is simply dead on arrival. You would be better-off having a single committee on Transportation with as many members as possible so that the committee can break itself into as many sub-committees as necessary.

Similarly, there is hardly any justification for creating separate committees on gas, downstream and up-stream operations, etc., when, in fact, all these could be subsumed under sub-committees in a single Committee on Petroleum Resources.

Elsewhere, parliaments are already experimenting on the use of joint committees of members of both chambers in many areas of common concern and it is working out well. That’s the way to go!

Omorotionmwan writes from Canada