Senators Ahmed Sani
Yerima(left); Ahmad Lawan; President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki;
members of the Joint Technical Committee on the Transport Sector Reform Bills,
Dr. Dr Sam Amadi and Nanna Ude after the inauguration of the committee by the
Senate President in Abuja yesterday.<br />
In his desire to ensure
that critical economic bills pending before the Senate get necessary technical
input from industry players to make for efficiency and effectiveness when
passed, Senate President Bukola Saraki, yesterday, inaugurated a Joint
Technical Committee on the Transport Sector Reform Bills.
Saraki, who informed that the Senate has made the passage of the
various transport sector infrastructure bills a critical aspect of its legislative
agenda, listed the affected Transport reform bills to include: The Railway Bill
– to reform the rail systems; the Ports and Harbour Bill – for the efficient
running of the ports; and the National Transport Commission Bill – to serve as
the sector’s regulatory body.
Others are the National Inland Waterways Bill – to develop the
inland waterways transport system; the Federal Roads Fund Bill – to ensure
efficient maintenance of the federal road network; and the Federal Roads
Authority Bill – to manage the nation’s federal roads.
Saraki said raising the
committee of experts became necessary to use their technical knowledge to
enrich and assist the work of the various Senate Committees to ensure that
there is regulatory alignment across the entire regulatory arrangements in the
transport sector.
Members of the Committee include: Dr. Sam Amadi –Chairman, Mr.
Nnanna Ude, Mr. Philip Asante, Engr. Olusegun Toluhi, Mr. Kingsley Amaku, Mr.
Akin Ajibola, Mr. Kayode Khalidson, Dr. Tayo Aduloju, Dr. Joyce Wigwe, Mr.
Rowland Ataguba, Mr. Sotonye Etomi and Mr. Sam Aiboni.
“Your work therefore, is to ensure the integrity of the entire
system, the efficiency and legal integrity of the various transport bills
enumerated above to enable the Senate reduce areas of conflict, inefficiency,
unnecessary regulatory burden and ensure the achievement of the overarching
objective of reducing cost of doing business and increasing the ease of doing
business for our SMEs.
“Your work today, is very critical and will help ensure that our
decisions on these bills are grounded in knowledge and field experience vital
for the success of the objectives of the laws as these bills will not only
serve this generation effectively but many more generations to come,” he said.
He noted that the 8th National Assembly is not unaware of the cry
of Nigerians over the issue of bad roads, inefficient rails, sloppy port
operations and dropping efficiency levels in the aviation industry.
“Like you, we want to see the day when we shall no longer hear
that our people spend endless man-hours stuck in traffic; weeks on end clearing
simple goods from the port and the attendant rise in cost of doing business due
to these challenges.
“While we are, indeed, in a hurry to ensure we deliver on our
promise to our people to pass all our economic reform bills, this 8th Senate is
determined to also ensure that they actually meet our needs not just for today
but for generations yet unborn.
“We want to ensure that these exercise is able to cut by a half,
our World Bank ease of doing business ranking. In a nutshell, it is important
to us that we get it right and your invaluable contributions will be most
helpful,” Saraki said. He noted that the Bills when passed would help the
country modernize and expand its transport sector infrastructure.
He said that already there is the National Assembly Business
Environment Roundtable (NASSBER) report, which suggests that the bills alone
can help add 87,000 new jobs annually for the next five years, with an income
growth average of 7 percent.
Saraki added: “This is our aim, to see more jobs added to get our
people out of the streets and occupied and opportunity to see our economy
diversify and recover from recession. But this will only happen if these bills
are well and carefully synchronized to deliver especially in the regulatory
framework we have adopted.
“This Senate is on the same page with the Executive on this. The
task we have set for ourselves has never been done before. We are however, not
overawed by it.
“Rather, we have embraced it as the necessary challenge and needed
sacrifice to make for us to achieve a secure Nigerian economy for tomorrow. We
have set out to comprehensively reform our entire market framework to entrench
efficiency, accountability, independence and market orientation across our
economic base.
“This is especially so with the infrastructure market architecture
with our adoption of the intermodal transport sector scheme. This is where the
work of this committee is most critical,” he said.
Responding on behalf of the other members of the Joint Technical
Committee, a former Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission
(NERC) and chairman of the committee, Dr. Sam Amadi, thanked the Senate
President and his colleagues for the quality leadership they have been
providing to the country.
He described the Joint Technical Committee as an innovative
approach in lawmaking that has brought experts from the business community and
the academia together to examine proposed institutional and regulatory
frameworks to enable the legislators make the best laws possible for the
country.
“We appreciate these innovation and we are already seeing how it
is improving the quality of lawmaking. Our task is simple sir, to make sure
that the Bills are right…we will do our best to deliver on our assignment,” Amadi
said.
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