As Senate resumes from its long annual vacation Monday., the Senate will immediately move into action to consider the proposals made by the executive arm of government in the recently released 2020-2022 Medium Term Expenditure Frame Work, MTEF and Fiscal Strategy Paper.
On resumption tomorrow, the Senate, after consideration of the MTEF/ FSP and subsequent passage, would be ready to receive the 2020 Appropriation Bill from President Muhammadu Buhari.
President of the Senate, Senator Ahmad Lawan, had stated on Friday that the Upper Chamber had already received the MTEF/ FSP documents from the Executive for subsequent consideration.
Some of the highlights of the 2020-2022 MTEF/FSP documents released by the executive last week, pegged the projected budget profile for the year at N8.7 trillion, $55 oil price bench mark, against $60 used for the N8.9trillion 2019 budget, 2.1million barrels oil production, against the 2.3 million barrels per day approved for the 2019 budget.
Speaking with journalists in Abuja after his return to Nigeria from Morocco and Germany, Senator Lawan said the Senate on resumption this week, would consider the documents, stressing that the National Assembly was hopeful, optimistic, hungry and thirsty to receive the 2020 appropriations bill.
Lawan had said: “We are hopeful and optimistic, as well as hungry and thirsty to receive the 2020 appropriations bill.
“I am aware that the executive arm of government is working assiduously to ensure that the appropriation bill for the year 2020 is presented to the National Assembly by the end of this month.
“The National Assembly will work so hard to ensure that the 2020 budget is passed before we go on Christmas break.”
Meanwhile, the composition of members of the 69 standing committees of the Senate may lead some crisis as only the chairmen and vice chairmen of the committees were announced by the President of the Senate before the lawmakers went on break.
Of the chairmanship positions, 49 slots went to senators of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, while the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP got 20 slots.
When broken down according to the slots allocated to the six geo-political zones of the country, North West got 16; Southwest, 13; Northeast, 11; North Central, 10; South-South, 10; and South East, 9.
Further break down shows that chairmanship of 16 of the 23 standing committees considered juicy went to APC senators, while their counterparts in PDP got seven.
It would also be recalled that the number of Committees began with as little as 30 in 1999.
The Senate in the United States has 21 Standing Committees.
As the Senators resume, the manner the chairmanship positions was allocated may cause very serious crisis as there are complaints by senators over the committees given to them.
Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, may not have entirely escaped the aftershocks of the red chamber’s appointment of chairmen of committees.
Unless Senator Lawan manages the aftermath well, he may have a hard time controlling the Senate as some Senators had expected to chair committees different from the ones they were given.
It is a known fact that the survival of any Senate President hangs on his ability to manipulate the headship of committees.
Recall that the phenomenon, fused with a potent ability to rock the tenures of Senate presidents, has bothered occupants of the legislative position from 1999 till date.
There are complaints by some senators who regretted that despite the moral and financial support they gave to ensure Lawan emerged as Senate president, the committees assigned to them fell short of their expectations.
According to a source, a senator from the South West actually wanted the Appropriations Committee, but was given to a Senator from North West, just as a very ranking senator from the North West who wanted the Committee on Works was given another committee he described as very low.
Similarly, a very ranking senator from South South wanted the Committee on Niger Delta Affairs, but was not given.
According to a source, the South South senator did not get the committee because of politics of who becomes the next governor of the senator’s state.
It was learned that as a senator from his state was said to have stopped it because the ranking senator may be too powerful and empowered financially to contest the position.
Senators are also complaining that the Selection Committee, the special body which consists of the President of the Senate, his deputy, the majority leader, minority leader and all other principal officers that handles the process according to the Standing Orders, was not allowed to do that this time.
At the end of the day, if anything goes wrong however, aggrieved lawmakers naturally go for the jugular of the President of the Senate.
The appointment of chairmen of committees is ruled by two phrases: juicy and non-juicy.
A juicy committee is a legislative organ with supervisory powers over government agencies that control huge finances, just as ministries are tagged Grade A, B, and C.
For instance, the Senate Committee on Petroleum, Upstream or Downstream cannot be compared with its counterpart in culture and Tourism. Again, the Senate Committee on Appropriations is considered more inviting than Women affairs, Population and National Identity or Labour and Productivity, among others.
It will be recalled that the Immediate past President of the Senate, Senator Bukola Saraki, escaped the problem within the first legislative year when he reconciled with all aggrieved senators as Kabiru Marafa, Suleiman Hunkuyi, Oluremi Tinubu, among others, by reshuffling the leadership of the committees.
Senator Kabiru Marafa, for instance, was taken to the juicy Petroleum resources (downstream) Committee and since then, he stopped the hitherto fight with Saraki and Senator Oluremi Tinubu was moved from Women Affairs Committee to Environment.
Apparently aware that he must nip in the bud the simmering tension, Lawan has already begun promising angry senators that a review was in the pipeline, but how well he will succeed as the Senate resumes will be determined in the next few days.
Some senators have confirmed that the development was tearing apart the camp of Lawan’s loyalists.
A senator said: “The issue is generating a serious crisis as some loyalists of the Senate President are accusing the leadership of favouring people from the North at the detriment of their Southern counterparts.”
Some senators under the aegis of ‘Ninth Senate Group For Good Governance’, had accused the leadership of the Senate of not walking its talk, especially with regard to its campaign promises, just as they have however regretted that despite their moral and financial support for Lawan, they have been used and dumped.
A statement by the group had read in part: “We are some of the senators who contributed our quota in the build-up to your emergence as president of the Ninth Senate.
“You know very well that those who know you closely did everything possible to dissuade many of us. Many of your opponents raised a lot of questions trying to convince us. We kept away all doubts and vigorously stood by you through thick and thin.
“You promised many of us good committees, knowing how hard we tried. Many of us tried to pin you down to specifics but you kept shifting the date of the announcement until the date of our departure for recess. When we come back from recess, this issue shall be raised and must be addressed.”
But in his reaction, Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Adedayo Adeyeye, APC, Ekiti South, who had spoken with journalists on the issue, had dismissed insinuations about juicy committees.
He had said: “You journalists talk about juicy and non-juicy committees. In any case, juicy or non-juicy, I believe that it is a call to duty for senators to serve their fatherland and serve the nation meritoriously. So, in whatever capacity anybody has been placed, he has been called upon to merely render service.
“If you have 69 committees, there is no way about seven people who want to be chairman of a particular committee could get it. Only one person would be appointed. The Senate president has done everything possible to keep the Senate together and as such, there should be no form of rancour on the issue either now or when we resume.”
The Senate went on break July 30 and to reconvene tomorrow, September 24.
