By Mayowa Okekale, Abuja

The newly inaugurated Senate will focus its legislative activities on people-oriented bills and the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), including probing the running corruption in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), according to Bukola Saraki.

Senate President Saraki disclosed this while hosting some civil society groups, under the aegis of the Civil Society Situation Room, led by SirClement Nwankwo.                       

The Senate President added that some of the bills are critical to the reform project of the Federal Government, and the Senate will give accelerated processing to the bills.

However, some of the bills which will be given immediate attention include the planned amendment of the 1999 constitution; the 2011 Electoral Act Amendment Bill and the PIB.

“Some of us have strong views that issues of budget must be transparent. The days are gone when agencies like the NNPC would be functioning without operational budget. We must move away from that because one of the key issues that we have now is the issue of revenue leakages due to lack of transparency,” he said.

He said that the era of deliberate non-provision of operation budget for agencies of government to function was over, and the eighth Senate would pay adequate attention to critical bills in the new dispensation.