889 bills pending in NASS

After one year in office, the two chambers of the 8th National Assembly are yet to pass 889 bills.

The bulk of the pending bills of 600 are in the House of Rep­resentatives while 289 are in the Senate.

The disclosures came from the leadership of the two cham­bers on Thursday when they pre­sented their scorecards.

The Senate said that it had passed 11 bills since its inaugura­tion which are awaiting President Muhammadu Buhari’s assent.

The upper chamber also passed 96 resolutions and made various confirmations of appoint­ments of the Executive arm of gov­ernment ranging from Ministers, Service Chiefs, as well as heads of government parastatals and de­partments.

Briefing Senate correspond­ents in Abuja on Thursday, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Business, Senator Baba­jide Omoworare, said that the Red Chamber would have achieved more but for the distractions it faced during the period under review.

He said between June 9, 2015 and June 6, 2016, a total of 300 Bills were introduced amongst which are four Executive Bills, while the rest are members’ bills.

He added that of the 300, 186 Bills are at the first reading stage, 45 read the second time and re­ferred to the relevant committees.

At the House of Representa­tives, the Speaker, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, said that the House has passed 85 bills out of 675 bills re­ceived.

In a speech delivered at the plenary session, Dogara noted that in the last one year, they have laid a solid foundation on which the promise of effective and posi­tive legislation for the benefit of all Nigerians can be delivered.

He said the House passed a to­tal of 85 bills in the first legislative year of the 8th National Assem­bly which is the highest the low­er chamber has passed since the country returned to democratic rule in 1999.

“A total of 685 bills were re­ceived in the House. The bulk of these bills, indeed, about 98 per­cent, 675 were members’ bills, 10 executive bills.

“Out of the bills, 416 are await­ing second reading; 130 bills have been referred to the committees and three bills are awaiting con­sideration. It is instructive to ob­serve that 85 of these bills have been passed by the House so far, “he said.

And in their independent as­sessment of the journey so far, Senators have lamented the poor state of the nation’s economy but expressed their readiness to sup­port the Executive to tackle the problems facing the country.

The Senate President, Buko­la Saraki, in his first anniversary speech, noted that the 8th Senate faced enormous challenges that al­most destabilised it.

He observed that the biggest challenges confronting the present administration were the unprec­edented decline in government revenue and the state of security in the country.

Saraki said: “The collapse in oil price has without doubt brought huge shock to our econ­omy on a scale that perhaps, has never been experienced before. This requires us to develop crea­tive strategies that would stimu­late business and investments into other sectors. For decades, we have talked about the need to diversify our economy.”

The Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, who applauded his colleagues for considering him for the position of presiding offic­er despite his opposition party sta­tus, appealed to them to drop their differences and work as a team to rescue the nation’s economy from total collapse.