THE House of Representatives yesterday urged the Federal Government to , as a matter of urgency, reconstitute the boards of agencies and parastatals to facilitate good governance.
It mandated its Committee on Governmental Affairs to ensure implementation and report back to it within four weeks for further legislative action.
The resolutions followed a motion by a member, Abdullahi Umar Faruk, with the title: โUrgent need to re-constitute the boards of parastatals and agencies in order to hasten good governance,โ which passed with majority votes on the floor.
Moving the motion, Faruk noted that โSection 5 (1) (a) of the 1999 Constitution vests executive powers of the Federation in the President which he can exercise either directly or through the Vice President and Ministers or officers in the public service.
โThe boards of parastatals are saddled with the daunting task of setting out broad economic, financial, operational and administrative guidelines and targets for their various agencies as well as managing policy issues, monitoring of institutional projects, programmes and ensuring that the parastatalsโ mandates are realised.
โPresident Muhammadu Buhari dissolved the Governing Boards of Government Agencies and Parastatals on July 16, 2015 and the Chief Executive Officers of the affected agencies/parastatals were directed to refer all matters requiring the attention of the boards to the president, through the Permanent Secretaries, until the boards are reconstituted.โ
The lawmaker said the absence of the boards of these parastatals, including the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS), National Universities Commission (NUC), among others, has created major challenges to the operations of the agencies since critical decisions that need the boardโs attention in the face of the economic recession are left unattended to.
โThe continued failure to reconstitute the boards poses great economic disservice to the nation and the directive for matters requiring the attention of the boards to be referred to the president is unwieldy and will tend to overlabour the president, thereby slowing the pace of the work of the parastatals,โ the lawmaker said.
Members like the House Minority Leader, Leo Ogor , Chairperson, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Nnena Elendu- Ukeje, Edward Pwajok, Sadiq Ibrahim and Ogene Egoh, amongst others, supported the motion.
When the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, called for a vote, it was passed without dissent.
