Committees: Fresh Round Of Crisis Brewing In Senate

A fresh round of crisis may be brewing in the 8th Senate, aside theONE over leadership.

Going by the provision of its amended 2015 standing rules, there’s bound to be a change from the traditional way of appointing chairmen and vice chairmen for its 57 standing committees, Leadership reports.

Order 3(4) of the 8th Senate Standing Orders 2015 as amended states that: “The appointment of senators as chairmen andMEMBERS of committees shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the six geo-political zones of the country and there shall be no predominance of senators from a few geo-political zones”.

Over the years, from the 4th to the recently ended 7th Senate, chairmanship positions of the 57 committees have been in favour of senators belonging to the ruling party and ranking in status.

But this time, based on the new rule, the Senate is expected to distribute its committees equally among the six geo-political zones of the country, so each zone will beGETTING at least, nine committee chairmanship seats out of the total 57 Senate committees, irrespective of political party affiliation.

What this implies is that the All Progressives Congress (APC) will not be favoured as the ruling party like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when it was in power.

This is because the APC drew its membership mainly from the North West, North Central and the South West.

The amended 2015 Standing Rule has been trailed by controversy, as the Unity Forum Senators had described it as forgery of the Senate rule.

They even went as far as petitioning the police, who consequently summoned the leadership of the 7th Senate including senators David Mark, Ike Ekweremadu, Victor Ndoma-Egba and the the president of the 8th Senate, Bukola Saraki for questioning.

Ekweremadu has been under attack over allegations of altering the Senate rules on processes of election of presiding officers of the upper legislative chamber but the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, had warned those threatening to harm him, to desist from doing so or face the consequences.