Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja

The House of Representatives, yesterday, barred journalists from covering the public hearing on the controversial Control of Infectious Diseases Bill organised by the House Committees on Health Services, Health Institutions and Justice.

This is as the governors of the 36 states under the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) said they were opposed to the bill for seeking to emasculate them.

A security personnel from the office of the Sergeant-at-Arm stationed at the entrance of Hearing Room 028 said he was instructed not to allow journalists in.

He said it  was only the chairman of the House Committee on Health Services, Tanko Sununu, and the committee’s clerk, Joyce Umeru, that could permit the admittance of journalists accredited to cover activities of the House into the public hearing.

According to him, they were strictly instructed to allow  only reporters from the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) and Channels Television into the venue.

The Control of Infectious Diseases Bill,  which is sponsored by Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila, and two others has been trailed by controversy,  amidst allegations that the bill was plagiarised from a similar bill in Singapore.

The bill had generated furore on the floor of the House, last month, after Gbajabiamila attempted to push it through first and  second reading as well as  committee consideration within a few hours.

Gbajabiamila in his speech at the public hearing,   said the House will treat contributions from members of the public seriously.

“I assure you of three things; the first is that no part of this bill is the product of any external influence. The second is that we will not ignore your contributions and recommendations, as the House of Representatives is wholly committed to refining this bill until we have a document that solves our present problems without creating new ones or exacerbating unforeseen challenges.

“We look forward to producing final legislation that reflects our own best intentions as well as the considered contributions of all people of good conscience. It is necessary to note that a lot of the engagement on this proposed legislation has been ill-informed and outrightly malicious. There are those in our society, who benefit from promoting the falsehood that every government’s action is cynical and every policy proposal must be the product of malignant influence.

“We must never succumb to the impulses that these elements represent, and we must reject them always as doing so is an act of excellent service to a nation we love and are beholden to”.

In his presentation, NGF chairman, Kayode Fayemi,  said the proposed legislation seeks to take away the authority of governors to take specific measures in their states during an outbreak of an infectious disease.

Fayemi, who is also governor of Ekiti State said “a situation where governors do not have any power to make regulations in their states in the event of an outbreak of an infectious disease or to declare any part of the state an infectious area is not only inimical to the country’s federalism, but a recipe for disaster.

“The bill appears to vest overbearing discretionary powers on the Director General of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the central authorities while making no provision for reviewing and controlling the exercise of such powers,” he said.

Meanwhile, the House has called for a review of the country’s foreign policy  as part of efforts to halt racial discrimination and oppression against the black race across the world.

It also mandated its Committees on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora to organise a conference of local and international stakeholders to fashion out a comprehensive approach to tackle rising cases of discrimination,  oppression against Nigerians,  Africans and other other black people.