EMERGENCY MEETING OF THE ABH HALL ASSEMBLY MEETING: HALL CHAIRMAN, HALL SECRETARY AND FEMALE AFFAIRS MINISTER GET FINED
An emergency Hall Assembly meeting which held on Wednesday, the 7th of August, 2024 at the Famewo Common Room (FCR) was slated to begin at 8pm. The meeting held based on a resolution made in the last meeting two weeks ago. The sole purpose of the meeting asides other agendas was for the presentation of the budget of the executive council which couldn’t be presented two weeks earlier majorly on account of incompleteness. It was hoped that the meeting this time would proffer significant progress, but did it?
The executive budget at the previous meeting had not contained the budgets of three offices: The Hall Chairman, Hall Secretary and the Female Affairs Minister. At the present sitting, to the dismay of the honourables, it was noted that the three wanting budgets, although now featuring in the adjusted document, had not been earlier sent to the budget review committee for recommendations as the usual procedure is. Some agitated honourables were of the opinion that the inaction of the executive council should not be excused and was worthy of punishment. It was also suggested that the executive council should be referred to the disciplinary committee once again. Honourable Okei suggested that the entire executive council be mandated to each pay a fine. In her words, “If they can waste our time, then we should waste their money as well.”
Amongst the clamour for punishment, some honourables requested that they should be pardoned, one of them was Honourable Abdullahi, who appealed to house to let the occurrence slide considering that the executive council has made some corrections and have been running the affairs of the hall out of pocket. Hon. Oladele of the MLS Constituency, requested for the Hall Secretary, Mr. Fort Israel, to step up to the podium to explain why the missing budgets weren’t sent to budget review committee. The Hall Secretary had a lengthy response, but the Speaker felt he hadn’t done justice to answering the question. The Hall Chairman, Mr. Ayotunde Oni, however offered apologies for the messy situation and appealed to present the parts of the budget that have been reviewed.
In finding a resolution to the present ‘messy’ situation, three motions were passed: the first motion was for all members of the executive council to each pay a fine of #1,000 to the Hall Assembly within one week; the second was for the Hall Secretary to write a letter of apology and pay a sum of #1,000 to the house’s account; the third motion, a counter motion, was for the Hall Chairman, Hall Secretary and Female Affairs Minister to each pay a fine of #1,000 within one week. Through simple majority, the third motion was enacted. By this time, it was three minutes past 11pm. The Hall Chairman was finally called to the podium to fulfill the sole reason for which the meeting was called and the office of the Deputy Hall Chair was presented first.
This was not a smooth ride as the journey was fraught with several back and forth between the honourables and the executive council as well as amongst themselves over certain aspects of the budget of the Deputy Hall Secretary. One of them had been the monthly allocation for airtime which was pegged at a cost of #1,000 monthly, but some members of the house opined for it to be reduced to #500. However, the former amount was maintained after some deliberations. With further deliberations, it was observed that a sizeable number of the honourables were now dozing on their seats and weren’t as engaging as before. One couldn’t blame them: the already dim lights powered by the inverter made the atmosphere conducive for not only thirsty mosquitoes but also for slumber.
After the Speaker, Honourable Omotayo Goodluck, requested for alert honourables to wake their slumbering counterparts, some honourables clamoured for the adjournment of the meeting but, Honourable Olayiwola of the UIMSA Constituency who seemed energetic suggested for the honourables to make the sacrifice and disregard their discomfort for the meeting to go on so parts of the budget can be approved to facilitate the running of the Hall’s administration. Two motions were then passed: the first motion was for the meeting to persist and the second motion was for the budget of the Social and Buttery Minister (SBM) to be read and the meeting adjourned to Saturday. Through simple majority, the second motion was enacted.
The meeting came to an end at few minutes past 2am with the budgets of only two offices were presented to the house and the budget of the rest eight offices still pending. Earlier, the speaker voiced his displeasure at having to arrange several meetings outside of the customary meetings. It is therefore hoped that this coming Saturday will bring a final tie to everything that pertains to approval of budgets and presentation of year plans for the tenure that is past two months old.
