By Ezrel Tabiowo
Abuja
President of the Senate, Senator David Mark, has advocated for synergy between the National Assembly and State houses of assemblies in the country.
Mark made the call yesterday in an address delivered to declare open a four-day Induction certificate course for legislators of state assemblies, and organised by the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS).
The Senate President, who lamented the high turnover of legislators since the country’s transition to civilian rule in 1999, stated that the trend impacted negatively on guaranteeing efficiency and effectiveness in legislative practice.
“Since 1999, a defining feature of our democracy has been the high turnover of our legislators. This presents a serious challenge as it impacts negatively on legislative effectiveness as more experienced members give way to newer ones. As a result, in every four years institutional memory is lost and sadly the nation is worse off for it,” he said.
According to him, most state assemblies face challenges such as lack of adequate facilities, low quality of support staff, inadequate capacity building activities and Executive dominance and interference.
Given these challenges, the need for a sustained capacity building cannot be over-emphasized.
Senator Mark, however, urged State Assemblies to take advantage of the programmes which NILS had designed to improve the efficiency of the legislatures.
He said: “May I also take this opportunity to advocate for greater synergy and communication between the National Assembly and the State Legislatures.
“NILS has organised many training programmes for State Assemblies in the past 3 years. Among these are the NILS-CAP Project, partly funded by Africa Capacity Building Foundation, supported the training of parliamentary staff of State Assemblies in 2014. I hope that such capacity development activities will continue to enrich the State Assemblies.”
Identifying another challenge faced by state assemblies in Nigeria as funding, the senate president stated that the issue which has been debated extensively cannot be isolated from institutional autonomy.
According to him, attempts by state governors to stall financial autonomy for state assemblies during the last constitutional amendment exercise was intended to gag the legislature by making it a mere rubber stamp of the executive arm of government.
