Spelling errors stall Bill in Senate

Consideration of the Bill seeking more powers for the National Sugar Development Council was stalled at Thursday's Senate plenary due to some spelling and numbering errors.

Entitled: National Sugar Development Council Act 2004 Amendment Bill 2013, it was sponsored by Senator Nenadi Usman (PDP-Kaduna).

It had passed second reading and was sent to the Senate Committee on Industries for further legislative work.

However, during the consideration of the committee’s report at Thursday’s plenary, some senators observed some errors in the bill and asked that it should be sent back to the committee for fine tuning. 

Usman told newsmen that the errorswere minor and the committee would need just a few hours to correct them. “What needs to be done will take the committee just a few hours or at most a day because it was just some numberings that we didn’t get right and some spelling errors, which we will correct,” Usman said.She said the exercise was only an amendment to strengthen an existing law, which was weak, in order to give the council powers to deliver on its mandate.  

Usman said: “This is just an amendment because there is an existing Act setting up the National Sugar Development Council.“The council has not been achieving much because the Act that set it up was a bit weak in some areas.”Usman recalled that the Minister of Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga, had, alongside major stakeholders in the sugar industry, worked on the National Sugar Master Plan. She, however, added that the master plan on its own could not deliver what Nigerians sought to achieve in the sugar industry.She added: Nigerians seek to have backward integration in the industry.“That is having more people employed.“But with the plan alone, it’s not going to work.“So, what the plan needs is for it to be backed by a very strong bill hence this bill.”The chairman was optimistic that when the amendment becomes effective, the council would live up to its responsibilities because major stakeholders in the sugar industry had made inputs into the Act.Usman said: “We didn’t just, as a committee, sit down and work on this amendment.“We invited major stakeholders, including the board itself and the minister, to make inputs.“This means that everyone who should make an input has made an input, that is all those who know about the sugar industry.”

The Senate President, David Mark, had on May 22 said the N228.5 billion claimed to have been used for sugar importation within three years was alarming.Mark made the remark at the second reading of the bill, adding that this could be described as “a classic example of policy failure”.