Saraki moves to reshuffle Senate Committees

There are indications that the Senate leadership is set to reshuffle standing committees of the Senate just to accommodate more lawmakers for chairmanship positions, while giving rooms for more members to belong to more committees.

This is part of moves by the Senate President, Abubakar Bukola Saraki to consolidate his grip amid reports that more of his supporters had been penciled to head ‘juicy’ Committees or rather be offered more of such.

Saraki had dropped the hint while responding to an observation made by his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu during plenary, stating that ‘clean up’ exercise would go a long way in assisting the upper chamber to clean up its committee system.

At the moment, the Senate has a total number of 68 standing committees.

The plan to reshuffling the Senate’s standing committees, Saraki stressed, 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 re-organised.

He alluded to a report being presented by the Senate Committee on Tertiary Education during which he noted that of the 21 members of the committee only 12 signed the report.

The Deputy Senate President averred that it was unusual and cumbersome for the Senate to continue to tolerate the development, adding, “We must ensure that Senators are placed in the number of committees they can handle.”

The Senate President who endorsed the idea said, “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.”

The last time the Senate reshuffled its committees was in 2016 when many Senators who were hitherto, not accommodated in ‘juicy’ committees were appointed as chairmen.

Again, in January 2017, the Senate slightly adjusted the composition of the standing committees during which it created three new committees while reshuffling the chairmanship of two others.

The addition of more committees had the number of committees in the Senate to 68.

Daily Times learnt that the leadership of the Senate have been uncomfortable with reports of inaction by members of different in which case, many of them had struggled to force their ways into different committees they were not originally posted, hence the need to rejig the whole composition.