Yinka Ajayi:
The Chairman, House Committee on Aids, Loans and Debt Management in the House of Representatives, Yinka Ajayi has posited that the success of democracy in any nation depended on the vibrancy and efficiency of the legislature. Ajayi stated this at the recent Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s Westminster Workshop in London, where he opined that for the legislature to meet the aspirations of the electorate, it must adopt creative ways of oiling its committee system.
Delegates to the Westminster workshop were drawn from 33 countries to discuss parliamentary financial oversight of aid effectiveness.
He said the legislature has proven to be very effective in carrying out background work, as well as overt processes for law-making to be possible and pleasurable.
He said donor agencies should strive to ensure that aid flows were captured in the annual national budgets to enable respective Parliaments monitor aid allocated to any Ministry, Department or Agency of government.
“As the Chairman of my country’s House of Representatives Committee on Aids, Loans and Debt Management, this conference has been a worthwhile experience, particularly the discussions on the role of parliaments in ensuring effective oversight of aid, development finance, anti-corruption strategies in aid, the role of parliamentary budget offices and independent fiscal institutions, strengthening peer-to-peer collaboration for aids effectiveness, among other very interesting sessions. We had opportunity to have interesting discussion on the donor perspective of the role of parliaments in aid oversight.”
He stressed that while the parliament as a whole has its key function of making laws and providing oversights to the executive arm of government, parliamentary committees are the engine room of the work of the parliament.
He noted that ‘’a committee in the parliament is a subdivision of that parliament into smaller units with a mandate to superintendent over specific aspects of legislative business and report back to the whole house in plenary with recommendations.’’
The legislator stressed that these committees perform tasks in greater detail, effectively and more expeditiously as a result of the decentralisation, specialisation and division of labour through the parliamentary committee system, much detailed work is achieved and relevant reports returned to the parent body for final legislative decisions.
He noted that the efficiency of the committee system therefore was a measure or determinant of the productivity of any parliament.
Members and chairs of the committees are either elected in some countries or appointed by the leadership of the parliament.
“In most if not all cases the power to set up committees in parliament is enshrined in the nation’s constitution or prime law.
However, while the power to set up parliamentary Committees is provided for in the constitution, the number of Committees to be set up is not necessarily explicitly prescribed or provided for by the constitution or prime law,” he said.