Senate leader, Ali Ndume
The delayed in the composition of Senate standing committees have been attributed to insistence by some senators to serve in ‘juicy’ committees.
About 50 out of the 109 members of the upper chamber have filled out forms distributed by the Senate leadership to serve in what is known among lawmakers as grade A committees and leaving other committees with fewer interest.
The Punch reports that this development gave the leadership of the red chamber much difficulty of redistributing the 65 committees among 109 senators.
The committees with the highest interest are Petroleum Resources (Upstream, Downstream and Gas), Niger Delta, Works, Finance, Federal Capital Territory, Health, Education, Defence (Air Force, Navy and Army), Appropriation and Communicat
Others are Environment, Ecology, Trade and Investment, Special Duties, Power, Solid Minerals, Sport, Social Development and Aviation.
It was learnt that only few senators shown interest to serve in these committees: National Planning; Media and Public Affairs; Establishment and Public Service, Foreign Affairs, Culture and Tourism and Drugs, Financial Crimes.
Reacting to the situation, the Senate leader, Ali Ndume said that leadership of the upper chamber had redistributed the committees equally stating that in the coming weeks, announcement of Senate standing committees will be made.
Ndume said: “The Senate will announce its committees before the end of this week. It has not been an easy work. Being the Senate leader, I am involved in the setting up of the committees.
“I must be frank, I thought it was a day’s job initially but honestly, it is not easy when you have about 60 committees and there are 109 members. What we did was to give out forms to members to indicate the committee they would be interested to serve
“By the time we complete the tabulation, there are some committees that were not selected by members. That may be because they don’t have the knowledge of the existence of these committees or their importance.
“On the other hand, we have traffic or congestion of traffic, with members selecting what some people call juicy committees. We have huge concentration of members showing interest in that.
“We have between 40 and 50 members selecting such committees. So, what we had been doing is that we have been carefully balancing the composition of the committees so that there won’t be any case of lopsidedness.”
Meanwhile, Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions will resume the investigation of the the Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Lamorde over a petition brought by Dr. George Uboh.
Anyanwu said that the committee suspended investigation into the case so as to allow the anti-graft agency boss enough time to prepare for his defence.
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