No fewer than 183 of 360 House of Representatives members do not have a single bill listed against their names since their inauguration in June last year, The Nation has found.
The 1,039 bills that have passed first reading were sponsored by only 177 members.
The Executive and the Senate also have bills either pending or being passed by the House.
Ten executive and 10 Senate bills are at various stages of consideration.
Our correspondent found that 93 All Progressives Congress (APC) members have sponsored bills in the House.
They lead members of the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP’s) 73, All Progressives Grand Alliance’s (APGA’s) six, African Democratic Congress’s (ADC’s) two and one each from members of the Action Democratic Party (ADP), Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Allied Peoples Movement (APM).
The Southwest leads in members with bills, with 43 of the 71 from the region proposing 181 bills since inception; 35 of 55 members from the Southsouth have proposed 198 bills.
Twenty-nine of the 51 members from the Northcentral have contributed 217 bills; 26 of the 43 members from the Southeast have contributed 192.
From the Northwest, 25 of 92 members from the region have contributed 158 bills; 19 members of the 48 from the Northeast have contributed 99 bills to the pool.
Tajudeen Abbas (APC, Kaduna) has the highest numbers of bills (58) that have passed through the first reading.
The Chief Whip, Tahir Mongunu (APC, Borno), has the second-highest number of bills (43).
Ossai Nicholas Ossai (PDP, Delta) is third with 38 bills; Dachung Bagos (PDP, Plateau) is fourth with 32 bills; House Spokesman, Benjamin Kalu (APC, Abia) and Uzoma Abonta (APGA, Abia) have 30 bills each.
Deputy Chief Whip, Nliruka Onyejeocha (APC, Abia), Minority Whip, Gideon Gwani (PDP, Kaduna), Simon Mwadkwon (PDP, Plateau) have 29, 23 and 21 bills.
Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila (APC, Lagos) has 19 bills against his name, with many of them already passed and some others awaiting committee report or second reading.
About 152 members have between one and nine bills, including Minority Leader Ndudi Elumelu (PDP, Delta), with nine bills.
The Nation found that 28 members account for about 564 of the bills currently being considered, ranging from 10 to 58 listed against each of them.
Immediate past Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, who recently returned to the APC, has 10 bills listed against his name; Deputy Speaker Ahmed Idris Wase (APC, Plateau) has 15 bills.
Lagos, which has 24 members, tops the states with the highest number of members who have sponsored bills (11).
Only a member each from Yobe (which has six members), Sokoto (11 members) and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) (two members) have sponsored bills.
Majority of the bills are either for new universities, polytechnics, colleges of education or agriculture, or federal medical centres; several others are on constitution amendment.
A breakdown shows that 81 of the bills seek one form of an amendment or the other to the constitution, while 44 seek the establishment of both conventional and specialised universities.
Also, 43 bills seek the establishment of federal medical centres across the country; 27 bills seek the establishment of federal colleges of education; 22 bills seek the establishment of colleges of agriculture, while 17 bills seek federal polytechnics.
Some bills are for the conversion of Auchi Polytechnic, Kaduna Polytechnic, Yaba College of Technology, Adeyemi College of Education and Federal College of Education, Zaria to universities.
While the bill seeking the conversion of Auchi Polytechnic to City University of Technology has been passed by both chambers of the National Assembly and is awaiting presidential assent, others are still at committee stages.
Source:- TheNationOnline
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