By Ezrel Tabiowo and Taiye Odewale, Abuja
Barring any unforeseen circumstances, all the standing committees of the Senate would be reshuffled next or upper week to accommodate more members for chairmanship positions and membership of committees, especially those considered to be juicy. Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, who dropped the hint yesterday while responding to an observation made by his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu during plenary, said the ‘clean up’ exercise would go a long way in assisting the upper chamber to clean up its committee system. Presently, the Senate has a total number of 68 standing committees and Saraki said the planned reshuffling of the committees would be done before the Senate proceeds on its yearly long recess this month.
Ekweremadu had observed that the structure of committees of the Senate at the moment had become very unhealthy and needed to be reorganised. He drew his observation from the report being presented by the Senate Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFund during which he noted that of the 21 members of the committee, only 12 signed the report. While declaring that it was unusual and cumbersome for the Senate to continue to tolerate the development, the deputy senate president said, “We must ensure that Senators are placed in the number of committees they can handle”. Responding, Saraki said: “I agree with you. We are going to clean it up before we go on recess. We have discussed this at the leadership level and we are going to do something about it to ensure that the right thing is done”. It was learnt that the Senate leadership had become uncomfortable with a development where many Senators forced themselves into membership of committees they were not originally assigned.
