While you were distracted by the executive branch’s show of shame last week through FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, something equally dramatic was unfolding in the federal legislature.
The House of Representatives, deploying ad hoc committees:
Launched an investigation into all security intervention funds disbursed by the federal government since 2020;
Resolved to investigate the worsening waste management crisis and the recurring failure of streetlights across the Federal Capital Territory;
Resolved to investigate abandoned government–owned landed properties and buildings nationwide, reportedly valued at over N20tn;
Launched a hearing into Nigeria’s management of $4.6 billion in health grants from the Global Fund and USAID between 2021 and 2025; and
Inaugurated an investigation into the operations, funding, and performance of Development Finance Institutions over the past seven years.
Now, keep in mind that there are 134 standing committees in the House: almost enough for every three members to have one. Given obvious ambitions and egos, the place is structured in such a way that almost everyone is a chairman or a vice-chairman of something or the other. One committee even has a vice-chairman without having a chairman.
The Representatives appear to be exceedingly busy people—so busy that there is a world, perhaps several worlds, of oversight that runs on ad hoc committees. An ad hoc committee is a bottomless pit into which public officials pour anything and everything, particularly when they do not want any actual work done or any decisions made.
If you need proof of these assertions, look at the website of the House: you cannot tell from the reporting what kind of work is really being accomplished.
Think about it: this is the 10th Assembly, yet, as I have complained several times, there is no sense of history. Nobody seems interested in maintaining an archive to show Nigerians, and posterity, how the constitutional work of legislation and oversight is being carried out, and to what extent.
And yet, the House suddenly erupts into zealous ad hoc committees within a matter of days? For an institution that has not been particularly productive in the past 26 years, something smells spectacularly foul.
Let us crane our necks back just a little: to May 2024, when the House declared it would commence “a comprehensive investigation” of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project. President Bola Tinubu had celebrated it as “world-class” infrastructure, while his Works Minister, David Umahi, broadcast it as a game-changing 10-lane highway.
But the House, completely blindsided by the project, tried to save face with that “comprehensive” probe announcement. Except that it never found the heart to start it, only to become even more irrelevant because of that failure.
What about the Ad hoc Committee on Arms that the House set up in 2021 to investigate 178,459 firearms that the Auditor-General of the Federation reported in 2019 to be missing from police formations around the country?
“Out of this number, 88,078 were AK-47 rifles,” the AuGF had reported.
What about the Ad hoc Committee on the Probe of Recovered Looted Funds and Assets of Government (2002-2020) that, in May 2021, seized control of media and political attention?
About that, in this column, I wondered loudly whether the House was “for sale or rent,” leading to my conclusion, just months later, that the National Assembly was in decay.
Beyond, or earlier than these, the House has seen some famous investigations in the past 26 years, such as the Farouk Lawan fuel subsidy matter in 2012; the $16bn power sector probe in 2008; a N2.74 trillion probe in 2015, and another 2019 House investigation.
But none of our children can write research papers on these and similar issues involving the House or the Senate by reviewing their records. Why? The National Assembly website shows no respect for reporting and does not maintain a comprehensive, searchable public archive, including that of its committees.
Both Houses are glad to advertise, ad nauseam, the names of their members and the membership of their committees. You can find the Order Papers of recent sessions and track current bills.
After that, you are on your own: there are no reports of full investigations, no matter how loudly proclaimed, nor any systematic, searchable records of previous sessions.
In neither the Senate nor the House is there, as they have it in other parts of the world, a searchable database of committee findings, public hearing transcripts, final recommendations, or implementation status of any decisions.
Sadly, this is what concerns me as I reflect on the blizzard of new ad hoc committees in the House this month.
Writing “The National Assembly Is In Decay,” I described the legislative branch as a caricature mimicking the legislative idea and process.
“This explains why there is no report of the probe of the use of recovered loot,” I said. “And why there will be no report detailing the nation’s booming industry in disappearing police equipment.”
And it explains, a priori, why the new committees are simply a joke about a joke.
This month’s deployment of new ad hoc committees to investigate important matters in the House can only be meaningful if there is a change in the attitude of every legislator, beginning with the leadership.
It is a shame that structures are established not to serve the people but to pretend to be serving them. This is political cynicism at the highest level.
I invite Speaker Abbas Tajudeen to take a long, hard look at the House, and to commit to making this critical institution work for Nigerians.
Inaugurating committees is not the assignment: getting them to complete their assignment, and then publishing the final report so that Nigerians can see how the legislative arm serves the people, is.
For 26 years, sadly, the House has failed miserably, and the 10th Assembly is emerging as the worst.