Legislative agenda: Nigerian graduates not productive ― Lawan

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has described Nigerian graduates as unproductive calling on the committees of the senate to interface with the relevant ministries, department and agencies to review the educational curriculum of the country to provide quality education for future Nigerians.

He said it was important for the committees to carry out this assignment to know what area of intervention it would take to stimulate the quality of education in the country.

Lawan said this in his remark on the debate of the Senate over the report of the Ad-hoc committee on the 9th Senate Legislative Agenda aimed at spurring the senate at improving the quality of life for Nigerians.

The President of the Senate noted that the modern economy is not driven by the enormity of natural resources but the intellectual capacity of nations and its human resources.

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He said Nigeria was in dire need of education curriculum that will impart functional knowledge and produce graduates that will compete with their contemporaries in countries like China and India.

Senator Lawan further declared that there was a need for reform in various sector and said there were agencies of government that have outlived their usefulness because they were created to drive a particular programme of the government.

He said: “These special purpose vehicles in the forms of government-owned agencies may have to be merged or scrapped as part of measure to free resources for the government to provide maximal benefits in other areas of the nation’s economy.”

“We have too many agencies that do not add value to the government but totally rely on allocation. We may have to merge them or scrap them.

“Many of these agencies were created to attend to certain policy and programme and may have outlived their usefulness. We just scrap them and create new ones to meet the new reality.”

Lawan also said the Senate was determined to carry out electoral reforms to make for better electoral experience, using the electoral experience of the 2019 general elections.

In his earlier contribution, Senator Mathew Urhoghide, representing Edo South said the 9th Assembly legislative agenda would amount to nothing if the security problem of the nation was not resolved.

He said legislative oversight of the security formation alone will not be sufficient to make the needed difference desired by the 9th Assembly and urged the Senate to take a deeper look at some areas of government agencies with a view to streamlining their operation in line with their budgetary provisions.

“I need to urge this Senate that the suggestion that has been made by the legislative committee would have to be looked a lot deeper so that we come up with a very stiff recommendation that will improve our security.

“The thing I believe we should do now is to ensure that that aspect of it that negates the objective of meeting the good of our people which is an issue of having enough money in our consolidated revenue funds to meet the budget financing.

“Therefore, the area of revenue must really be visited with very serious legislation. Only recently, the Chief of Saff to the President wrote the chairman of Federal Inland Revenue Service to explain the shortfall in revenue expectation.

“You’ll equally recall that the answer they were given was that all the expected revenue that was supposed to come into the federal government dis not come for one reason or the other.

“The Ad-hoc committee of Senator Solomon Adeola sometime ago went into these issues of revenues on revenue agencies of the federal government.

“We found out that those that are supposed to bear and use the revenue to the coffers of government have all fallen short. What they get as revenue, they spend against the norm. So we must come up with very serious legislation to bar the agencies from spending this money.

“The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2007 did not cure this problem at all. Even as they get the revenue, they do not pay it into the government coffers and nothing has happened to them.

“This issue of Treasury Single Account can take care of issue pertaining to revenue, I do not think we are meeting up on that so that we must come up with new legislation so that we can have enough money in the coffers of government to execute our budget.

“This again will affect our budget deficit, because we will have more money. This will, in turn, affect our external borrowing.”

Senator Chukwuka Utazi, Enugu North urged the Senate to ensure that the Proceeds of Corruption Bill that was passed before the close of the 8th Senate has not been signed and it is still lingering.

“It is very important we do it. I want to alert the National Assembly that the mutual evaluation by the Financial Action Task Force,  (FATF) a global agency that oversees the anti-corruption sites world over, are in the country as I am speaking, they are  trying to evaluate Nigeria to qualify to be member of the task force which has been elusive since 1999 since the return to democracy.

“We did much in the 8th Senate, trying to get it but while we were doing that there was a recession and we came out of it. It is important we speed up action on these issues but it does appear that the Executive is picking holes with it the House has done their bid and the bill is already here for concurrence so we have to tidy it and when that is done it would help the international community that is in the country now. We have to look at what we have to do to make sure things work.”

Senator Rochas Okorocha representing Imo West appealed to his colleagues to make the needed sacrifice to reduce the cost of governance.

“The Federal Ministry of Agriculture, my question is why should we have Federal Ministry of Agriculture? You only practise agriculture when the government has land, where does the country have land?

“Where agriculture must take place must be at the grassroots, local government level and state level. We could have an adviser with policymaking but not to have a full ministry of agriculture. These are things that create so much demand on the system and does not make it grow.

“The contract starts from Abuja before it gets to Okigwe junction, it is suffering from stroke, before it develops to Owerri it is developing HIV and before my village, it is an obituary. Our agenda must encourage the devolution of powers at all levels.

“The issue of budget passage is a major problem that we must look at. Over 70% of the bill passed in the 8th Senate were not assented by Mr President. This is outrageously calamitous. It calls for instantaneous correction. The process of Bill is cumbersome.

“95% of corruption in this country is through procurement. The Committee on Public Account must be strengthened and must show the political will to carry out very strong ameliorative measures on the issue of procurement in this country.

“You will see every year MDAs are buying generators, every year state governors are buying generators, they are buying diesel, buying computers. Our committee on procurement will have to be properly built if we want to tackle corruption in this country.”