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The House of Representatives is set to reconstitute standing
committees which are currently without leadership. The deputy speaker, Usman
Nafada, gave the indication yesterday at the end of the plenary session of the
House, which began a three weeks recess. The House will reconvene on Tuesday,
April 20.

Of the 84 committees in the House, seven of them are presently
without chairmen. They include Information and National Orientation, Power,
Privatisation and Commercialisation, Lake Chad, Women in Parliament,
Cooperation and Integration in Africa, and Works. The committee chairmen either
resigned, died, or were removed.

For instance, Ndudi Elumelu, who chaired the Power Committee,
was removed following the allegations of bribery that trailed the celebrated
investigation into the $16 billion allegedly expended on power reform by the
administration of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo. Since then, the deputy
whip, Tambuwal, has been running the committee. The elections of the former
chairmen of Works, Women in Parliament, and Lake Chad, Chuma Nzeribe, Lynda
Chuba-Ikpeazu, and Ahmed Salik respectively, into the House in 2007, were quashed
at the Court of Appeal.

Dino Melaye, who headed the Information Committee, was removed
when he unsuccessfully campaigned for the ouster of some principal officers who
allegedly mismanaged public funds; while his counterpart in Cooperation and
Integration in Africa, Independence Ogunewe, was sacked when he joined a
campaign to have the Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, probed over some financial
impropriety.

The former chairman of the Privatisation and Commercialisation,
Njidda Gella, died last August.

The committees are being run by their deputies.

Wanted during break

Mr. Nafada, while closing the plenary session yesterday, asked
members of the Selection Committee of the House to be ready because they would
be called during the three weeks recess, to reconstitute the committees.

Members of the committee statutorily include all the principal
officers of the House drawn from the majority and minority parties.

“Let me inform members of the Selection Committee that their
attention may be needed during the break for the reconstitution of the
committees lying vacant. The leadership and membership of the committees may be
reconstituted during the break. So, they (members of the Selection Committee)
may be asked to come back for this purpose,” the deputy speaker announced.

Mr. Nafada also said that the electronic voting machine, which
has not been put to use since the return of democracy to the country in 1999,
would be repaired before the House reconvenes to enable the lawmakers vote on
the proposed constitution amendment.

He urged members to read copies of the report of the 44-member ad-hoc
committee, which he headed, in order “to come with useful input” into the
amendment process.