OrderPaper, Nigeria’s famous parliamentary monitoring body has scored the National Assembly low in terms of legislative input in the past year.
This is as the organisation stated that a total of 164 lawmakers made up of 15 Senators and 149 House of Representatives members failed to sponsor a bill since the inauguration of the 10th Assembly on June 13, 2023.
In its performance report card on the parliament, OrderPaper said the past year witnessed a slow progression and recycling of bills in both chambers of the federal parliament.
In a statement issued on Wednesday by the Founder and Executive Director of OrderPaper, Oke Epia, the organisation said that the 10th Assembly “Witnessed a surge but the slow pace of progression of sponsored bills, a significant number of which were proposals recycled from the preceding 9th Assembly.”
The statement read in part, “15 Senators did not sponsor a bill while 149 members of the House, which is 12.6 per cent of the total membership, did not sponsor any bills in the period under review. Notably, 62 per cent of these representatives in the green chamber with no bills to their names, are first-time lawmakers.”
The data further revealed that over half of the bills sponsored in the Senate between June 2023 and May 2024, were recycled from previous Assemblies, especially the immediate past 9th Assembly.
“In a similar discovery, nearly one-third of the bills processed in the House of Representatives within the same period were resurrected from the past. This trend raises grave concerns about possible legislative ‘copy-pasting’ and further swirls speculations of merchandising of bills in the federal legislature.
“The analysis by OrderPaper shows that from June 2023 to May 2024, the Senate introduced a staggering 475 bills out of which only 19 have been passed while 416 remain stuck awaiting second reading.
In like manner, out of 1,175 bills introduced in the House of Representatives in the same period under review, only 58 have been passed while a vast majority of 967 are awaiting second reading,” the statement further read.
The performance report also highlighted a worrisome lack of focus on critical issues of national importance, noting that “Bills related to agriculture and food security make up only 5.8 per cent of the total House bills and 7.3 per cent of Senate bills. Security-related bills account for 7.2 per cent of House bills and 5.4 per cent of Senate bills.
“Despite the significant challenges faced by citizens in these sectors in recent years, bills addressing these issues remain few, with many not even progressing past the first reading.”
Commenting on the key findings, Epia said the surge in bill submissions by lawmakers and slow progress in processing underscored a real challenge the parliament has been contending with.
He called on Nigerians to show more than a passive interest in the governance of their country.
“Citizens must demand accountability from lawmakers by focusing not just on quantity, but on the quality and impact of their work concerning bills processing in parliament.
“OrderPaper calls for urgent action from legislators, citizens, as well as partners of the parliament to deploy these performance report cards to push for impactful legislative governance.
“We must move from the hollow boast of sheer volume which willy-nilly results in stalled bills towards impactful laws that address Nigeria’s pressing challenges.”
The gap between promise and progress must be closed if the 10th Assembly is to fulfill its potential,” he added.
Giving insight into the approach and focus of this year’s performance report card, Program Executive at OrderPaper Nigeria, Joy Erurane, said the team undertook a thorough sectoral analysis of bills processed to cover key areas like education, health, economic development, security, and public finance.
“The data, which were sourced from the records of the National Assembly and put through several integrity tests, highlights the imbalance in sectoral coverage of bills and the troubling trend of bill sponsorship without follow-through. While resurrecting bills from previous Assemblies is not inherently bad, it points to a need for genuine legislative commitment to avoid what has been termed legislative plagiarism,” the statement quoted her as saying.