In persons grafted in a serious trust, negligence is a crime, William Shakespeare.
The Finance committee, one of the most important Committee of the Students Union’s Representative Council, is vested with the power of making budgets for the House itself, scrutinizing other Committees’ budgets as well as the Executives’ budgets. It is statutory to be headed by a chairman with the inclusion of the Union’s Treasurer and other honorables as members.
For clearer understanding of the critical check on this specialized committee of the House, it is subdivided based on the relationship between the Committee and the Executive, the Committee and the House as well as a check on the Committee itself and recommendation based on revealed facts. Bon appetit.
THE FINANCE COMMITTEE AND THE EXECUTIVE
Since the formation of the Committee, headed by Mr. Timileyin of the Ransome Kuti Hall which also includes the Union’s Treasurer, Mr. Edet Collins, can one say that expectations have been met? For it apparent to note the lack/low synergy between the Committee and the Executives. Although, Democracy preaches thorough separation of powers, there is no system that embraced this, because the Arms of government are to be acting as watchdogs over themselves.
With the finance committee having to discharge its duty of scrutinizing the Executives’ budgets, they claimed the Executive were not giving utmost cooperation to the Union’s cause. Reason being that the supplementary budgets meant to be deliberated upon on the floor of the house was received two days before the sitting. As such, the chairman upheld that there was little to no time for appropriate scrutiny. In a part, one could say that there is no effective communication between the duo.
On the floor of the house, while the committee claimed that a withdrawal of over eight hundred thousand naira occurred from the Union’s treasury, the President said that only ‘N40,250’ was spent during the school break. As could be expected, back and forth argument ensued. Ease only came when the treasurer presented the Union’s bank statement to the speaker, Rt. Hon. Omitoyin. Ones’ mind then could not help it but to wander seeking clarity by asking some salient questions: why was the Bank Statement not presented to the committee prior to the sitting? Why is the synergy between the two teams not strong? Is the finance committee (in)capable of curbing the Executive’s excess spending of the treasury? Is it incompetent in discharging its duty?
THE FINANCE COMMITTEE AND THE HOUSE
It is pertinent to examine the relationship between the finance committee as an ad-hoc Committee of the House and the House itself in the discharge of its mandated responsibilities.During the course of financial reportage by the committee, there was an apparent failure in the discharge of duty: the presentation of the House budget. The various questions asked by the Honourable members of the Hallowed Chambers were either unanswered or replied with inconclusive answers. It was right there that the house voted unanimously to suspend the financial reports presented by the committee chairman.
In a check, the committee enjoys protection from the House leadership, which made it hard for some aggrieved Honorable members to air their displeasure with regards to the lackadaisical and incompetent attitudes being displayed by the committee.
THE COMMITTEE AND ITS MEMBERS
The committee also failed in its responsibility of meeting to deliberate on various financial reports. When the chairman was queried as to the low turn up of its members, he explained that ‘his members are not Ibadan-based’ and if they are to come to deliberate physically, the ‘SRC will foot their bills’. It is noteworthy that the committee has not met to deliberate on either the House’s financial reports or the Executive supplementary budget of the Office of the Assistant General Secretary’s Fresher’s Welcome.
The deliberation of the Fresher’s welcome budget was scrutinized by the House itself since the Committee has more or less neglect its duties having need to Add or subtract from the budget, which is the primary responsibility of the committee.
As a result of the ineptitudeness of the committee members, the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Omitoyin, formed an ad-hoc Finance committee of five members to complement the efforts of the earlier formed Finance committee.
It then won’t be out of order to query the committee pertaining the negligence of duties. Every circumstance in life calls for sacrifice -the alternative forgone as known in Economics. If members could not rightly prioritise Union’s cause, what then?
RECOMMENDATION
The members of the University have grafted unto these Honorable members trust, to drive our Union, Your Union, Their Union to Zion. Thus, negligence of duty must not be tolerated. On such basis, each member of the committee ought to appear before the House Disciplinary Committee to explain ‘WHY’ there is negligence of duties, and to answer the various questions asked above.
CASSIUS Writes.
