Reps angry with Jonathan again over NASS Service Commission board

Written by Jacob Segun Olatunji and Kolawole Daniel-Abuja Thursday, 04 October 2012

The  House of Representatives, on Wednesday, expressed displeasure with the failure of President Goodluck Jonathan to reconstitute the board of the National Assembly Commission since October last year, noting that the absence of the board had been hampering the activities of the commission and  that of the National Assembly.
Consequently, the House resolved to prevail on the president to, as a matter of urgency,  constitute the board and allow it to carry out its constitutional functions.
It said President Jonathan had no reason not to have constituted such an important board since last year despite the availability of qualified persons, who could serve on the board.
The chairman, House Committee on Public Service Matters, Honourable Andrew Uchendu, expressed the House's  displeasure in Abuja when he led other members of the committee for the oversight function on the 2012 budget performance appraisal of the National Assembly Service Commission.
The acting Secretary of the commission, Mr Olusanya Ajakaiye, had told the visiting House committee that the commission had got a  sum of N303,727,500 respresenting 75 per cent of the total capital allocation of N404,970,000 for 2012, but could not utilise the money because of the absence of  commissioners, who should be board members, empowered by the constitution to authorise the utilisation of the fund.
Mr Ajakaiye also pointed out that the  quarterly release of the capital expenditure allocation made it difficult to accumulate enough fund for the execution of projects but that it would still execute the projects captured in the budget in the last quarter of the year.
At this juncture, the chairman of the committee became furious, saying, “this is not acceptable to us as a committee. It is not in the best interest of the Nationaal Assembly to operate without a board. The president should constitute the board. He can- not tell us that there are no competent hands to serve on the board. The managment should always brief us about what is going on here. If we had been informed about this, we would have prevailed on him to do it.”

SOURCE: Nigerian Tribne, 4 October 2012. http://tribune.com.ng/index.php