Teddy Oscar Abuja
The Senate has declared that it would give priority attention to all pending legislative matters, including the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), FCT Budget, budget of government agencies, and matters dealing with electoral system restructuring and voters registration as soon as it resumes for the fourth legislative session.
Members of the Red Chambers, who are currently on two-week recess from the third legislative session of the 7th Senate, are expected back for the fourth session on Tuesday, June 24.
Briefing journalists on the performance of the third session of the 7th Senate on Monday, chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Business, Senator Ita Enang, assured that all critical and sensitive reports submitted so far by various committees of Senate would be debated upon and passed accordingly on resumption of its fourth session.
Enang, who disclosed that the directive was given by the Senate president, David Mark, hinted that no Senate probe report would be swept under the carpet.
“The Senate president has directed that since all these matters are of great public interest, that we would have to prioritise them. And that is the directive of the Senate president.
“We will give priority to every major matter that is pending. Also conscious of the time that the fourth session is a peculiar session, we will prioritise these bills and expedite the report of these bills as we resume from the end of the 3rd session break,” he said.
He also noted that a total of 187 bills were introduced during the third legislative session, which covered from June 2013 to June 2014.
He explained that out of the 187 bills, 12 were passed while 14 passed second reading.
Enang also spoke concerning the various stages of the bill.
“These include bills either passed, withdrawn, negatived, read a second time, committed to standing committees, consolidated, and all bills howsoever but published in the journal of the Senate.
“There are, however, some draft bills, which are yet to be numbered or published in the journal, or being now re-drafted or scrutinized. These are not included in the numbered 187 bills,” he explained.
The Senate, in the 3rd session, passed the Pension Reform Bill, Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition) Bill, and further extension of the State of Emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.
He described as untrue, allegations by some people that the senate leadership was trying to “kill” some reports of some committees which had implicated certain influential personalities in the society.
