As the tenure of the 360-member House of Representatives draws to a close in another six months, a staggering 319 bills are waiting to be passed by the federal lawmakers.
The term of four years of the legislators, who were inaugurated on June 4, 2007, will expire on June 3, 2011.
Investigations by SATURDAY PUNCH showed that about 419 bills were introduced in the House between June 2007 and June this year.
Also, about 40 more bills were reportedly received between July and November, bringing the total stock of the pieces of legislation introduced between 2007 and November 2010 to about 459.
This represents an average of 12 bills introduced every month in the House in the last 41 months.
However, only 125 of the bills have been passed by last June, according to the records obtained from the Committee on Rules and Business, the engine room of the parliament.
SATURDAY PUNCH investigations indicated that about 15 additional bills were passed last July, October and this month.
This leaves the total number of bills passed since 2007 at 140.
Among the most recent bills passed by the House are the 2010 Supplementary Appropriation Bill, the N87bn supplementary budget for the Independent National Electoral Commission, and the six executive bills rolled into one as the Bill for an Act to Alter the 1999 Constitution (First Alteration).
Another constitution alteration bill (Second Alteration), specifically to address the issue of timeline extension requested by INEC for the 2011 polls, was passed by the House recently.
Other latest bills included the Bill for (an) Act to Establish the Diaspora Commission of Nigeria; the Bill to Establish the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria; and the Bill to Establish the Centre for Democratic and Legislative Studies.
A close analysis implies that an average of three bills have been passed in each of the last 41 months, as against the 12 introduced in each of the months. Incidentally, the majority of the bills deal with amendments proposed to existing acts.
Investigations showed that some of the amendments just involved deleting some sections of a bill or replacing them with new ones.
Although the Speaker, Mr. Dimeji Bankole, has rated the current set of lawmakers as performing better than all their predecessors put together, SATURDAY PUNCH learnt that the committees of the House had come under pressure to reduce the pile of over 319 bills awaiting their attention.
Bankole himself hinted a few days back that more than 100 reports on bills assigned to some committees were either yet to be laid before the House or considered by the Committee of the Whole.
He gave a deadline of December for those affected to complete work on the reports, while warning that committees delaying progress of work faced the risk of losing their quarterly allocations.
The speaker’s figure apparently came out of the pending 319 bills, an indication that the general principles of the 219 others might not have been debated.
As at last July, the
Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Business, Mr. Ita Enang, had admitted that 142 bills had not reached the second reading stage.
Incidentally, SATURDAY PUNCH gathered that to ease the work of committees, the House budgeted huge funds annually for their operations.
In the 2009 budget, over N3.6bn was appropriated for committee duties, a figure which was jacked up to around N4bn in the 2010 budget.
Besides, each lawmaker takes home a quarterly allocation of N28m (about N9.33m per month) fixed for them by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission.
Speculations often denied by the House, however, put the unofficial quarterly allocation the lawmakers reportedly fixed for themselves at N42m (or N14m per month).
With about six months to the end of their tenure, SATURDAY PUNCH learnt that many committee chairmen had come under pressure to speed up work on the bills pending before them.
A committee source, however, described the task as “daunting” because of the limited time at the disposal of lawmakers.
“On paper, one can say that our legislators have about six months to the end of their tenure, but the reality is that they have less than four months to devote to serious legislative assignments,” the source, a committee clerk, told SATURDAY PUNCH on Friday in Abuja.
“When they resume from the Sallah (Eid-el Kabir) recess on November 23, they will sit for some days and close for the Christmas again to return in January.
“They have electioneering to attend to; they have to fight for re-election tickets and engage in negotiations up till April. The 2011 elections come up in April, a period lawmakers will devote more time to re-election than thinking of passing bills.
“So, we’re looking at the possibility of the lawmakers having a full concentration, maybe only in February, March and May,” he added.
Lawmakers sit in plenary
only 12 times each month, the sitting days being Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on a weekly basis.
This implies that there are 48 sitting days in the four months out of the six in which they are likely to deliberate and pass bills.
Investigations by SATURDAY PUNCH showed that an average of about three bills passed the third reading in every plenary.
This suggests that in the remaining 48 days, only 144 of the pending 319 bills may be passed by lawmakers, though some other bills will still be introduced.
Investigations showed that besides electioneering, bickering among some top officials of committees and their members was slowing down their work.
“Some committee chairmen and their deputies do not agree on issues; there is a tussling among them. Again, there are members who feel that they are not carried along by the chairmen. This is affecting attendance at meetings. Some committees find it difficult to hold regular meetings because of the frequent bickering,” a legislative aide told SATURDAY PUNCH in Abuja.
One of the bills trapped
in the House, which has attracted critical comments from the public, is the Freedom of Information Bill.
The FOI Bill has spent three-and-a-half years in the current House and a cumulative period of 10 years in the National Assembly.
SATURDAY PUNCH found out that the bill was trapped at the Committee of the Whole in the House, as efforts to make progress on it had always failed.
Only on Thursday, one of the lead sponsors of the bill, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, blamed its fate on fear on the part of a majority of the lawmakers.
According to her, a majority of lawmakers see the FOI Bill as a media bill targeted at exposing politicians and other influential personalities, a reason they are afraid of it.
But the Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Eseme Eyiboh, said that the issue was not the number of bills passed but the “quality and relevance of the bills.”
Eyiboh explained that many bills could be introduced to the House, but only important ones would be passed.
He added, “What are the contents of the bills? It is not every bill sent to the parliament that is passed. So, it is not the outcome but the process that matters.
“The House of Representatives is committed and we are equal to our responsibilities of ensuring that Nigerians get service delivery, irrespective of the fact that we are approaching elections.”
Enang, whose committee lists bills for consideration, told SATURDAY PUNCH that the House would “prioritise the bills.”
He added, “Only the bills that are relevant and touch on the critical sectors of the economy will be scrutinised and passed. That is why we have asked committees to turn in their reports.
“However, bills relating to the amendment of the constitution, budgets and those dealing with sensitive matters of national importance will be passed.”
Enang admitted that the upcoming elections could affect the attention of lawmakers, but clarified that adequate time would be devoted to legislative duties and electioneering.
However, in the Senate,
the status of bills in the last three years is still being compiled.
According to a member of staff of the Senate Rules and Business Committee, the compilations are not ready. He added that it would be difficult at the moment to tell which bills were passed and the ones that were outstanding.
He said the committee was working on a schedule that would ensure that the documents were ready for presentation to the Senate before the end of its session.
He said that the compilations would be authenticated before they could be made public.
Additional reports by Oluwole Josiah in Abuja
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