The leadership of the House of Representatives is set to reshuffle its standing committees, findings by The PUNCH indicated on Sunday.
Investigations revealed that the reshuffling might be one of the first tasks to be undertaken soon after the House would have resumed from its current three-week recess.
The recess, which started on Thursday last week to mark the end of the second session (June 6, 2012 to June 6, 2013) of the 7th Assembly, will end on June 25.
There are about 94 standing committees in the House and they draw funds from an annual budget of about N4bn set aside for committee operations.
Findings, however, showed that an alleged "poor legislative output" by most committees in the last two years had forced the leadership to consider reshuffling them.
It was gathered that a "worrisome dimension" was the failure of committees to report on assignments referred to them.
Such assignments include public hearings, reports on bills and other duties assigned to them from time to time.
"Some committees have not submitted a single quarterly report since 2011, while a number of them have not reported on any assignments in the last two years," a source told The PUNCH in Abuja.
The PUNCH learnt that the leadership of the House recently reviewed the performance of the committees and came to the conclusion that reshuffling them would produce better results in the remaining two years of the four-year term.
"This House has a four-year mandate; this is the mid-term. The leadership now knows the performance of every committee and can project what is likely to happen in the next two years", another source added.
Findings indicated that a serious problem with some of the committees was the alleged in-fighting between the chairmen and their deputies.
Most times, the deputies and members allegedly get information on happenings within the committees from second hand sources.
One of the lawmaker said, "The friction within the committees is affecting the smooth running of their activities.
"In addition, there are committees that rarely call meetings; so the members don't even know whether there is a committee.
"Again, almost every member wants to belong to certain committees considered as juicy committees; in the process, other committees suffer."
It was gathered that the Speaker of the House, Mr. Aminu Tambuwal, alluded to the poor performance of the committees in his second anniversary speech on Thursday last week.
Tambuwal also hinted on the next line of action when he stated, "Given the improvements in some House processes aimed at reducing legislative red tape, it must be admitted that the timeous reportage by House Committees on bills and other matters referred to them for action has been far from satisfactory."
When contacted for comments, the Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Zakari Mohammed, neither denied nor confirmed the planned reshuffling and sacking of committee chairmen.
The Punch