NASS Lagging Behind In ICT – Hamalai

Compared to its counterparts in developed countries, the National Assembly is serious lagging behind in the area of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) despite huge sums spent in that area, Director General of the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS) Dr Ladi Hamalai has said. The DG made this disclosure  at the validation workshop on capacity building of staff of the National Assembly.

According to her, a lot needed to be done to make the National Assembly be at per with its contemporaries in developed democracies around the world in terms of ICT.

 

Hamalai who was speaking based on a recent visit she and her team paid to the US Congress and the UK Parliament said however that despite the lagging behind in ICT, the Nigerian National Assembly was far better than other African parliaments in terms of infrastructure, manpower and other resources.

 

“In Africa, no parliament has what we have. However, the truth of the matter is there can never be enough. But in terms of ICT, we are far behind. We have committed a lot of resources in that regard, but we’re not where we should be yet. We should do more to meet up,” she said.

 

She said for example in the UK Parliament, there is a software that screens motions and bills to know if similar ones had been presented in the past, while in the US Congress, there is a legislative council office that treats about 50,000 bills and motions from individual lawmakers.

 

Hamalai said parliamentarians in US and UK take oversight and constituency matters seriously and that they rarely have the responsibility of taking care of personal demands of their individual constituents unlike what obtains in Nigeria, although she said few lawmakers there do assist their constituents on their own volition.

 

She therefore advocated for same to be done in the Nigerian parliament.

Speaking earlier, Prof Mike Obadan of the University of Benin who was part of the assessment team said although the National Assembly has enough human resources, they seem not to have the required education to carry out their duties.

 

He said in the area of ICT, the management should provide internet service to staff, adequate office accommodation for committees’ staff, and that inductions programmes as well as training and retraining should be strengthened.

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