Increase In Number Of Committees Is For Efficiency – Speaker

Oduyemi Odumade, Edited By Grace Namiji

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas says the House increased the number of its standing committees from 109 to more than 130 for efficient oversight functions of the House.

According to the Speaker the increase in the number of committees is not aimed at giving leadership positions to members of the House.

Dr. Abbas who stated this while interacting with members of the House of Representatives Press Corps, said some committees of the House were too large for effective oversight.

“For example, the committee on tertiary education had over 300 agencies to supervise and at the end of every year, they will end up not being able to oversight some of them. So we have to break it down to allow for efficiency and to put eyes on what the Executive is doing, he said”.

“The committee has been broken into University Education, Federal Polytechnic, Federal Colleges of Education, and TETFund” he said.

The Speaker further stated that the decision of the House to increase the number of standing committees has come under criticism.

He explained that in order to press home the need for efficiency in the work of the standing committees, the House decided to set up a monitoring committee that would monitor the work of the various committees and put them on their toes.

“In the past, not all committees were active. Now, we want to ensure that all standing committees are active, working for the betterment of the Nigerian people.

“We want to ensure transparency and we want results. That is why we set up a monitoring committee to monitor their activities.