Fifteen Senators, 149 Reps Failed To Sponsor Bill In One Year, Says OrderPaper Boss Epia
10 months ago 2 min read
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Nigeria’s premier parliamentary monitoring organisation and public think tank, OrderPaper, has criticised the National Assembly for not doing enough to pass bills.
The creator and Executive Director of OrderPaper, Oke Epia, on Wednesday, noted that while there was an increase in sponsored bills in the first year of the 10th National Assembly, progress was slow.
According to him, 15 senators and 149 members of the House of Representatives have failed to sponsor a bill in the period under consideration.
He stated that several of these bills were repeated from the previous 9th Assembly.
An assessment report surfacing this week disclosed that more than half of the legislation sponsored in the Senate from June 2023 to May 2024 was recycled from previous sessions.
According to Orderpaper’s analysis, only 19 of the 475 bills presented in the Senate have been passed, with the remaining 416 awaiting a second reading.
Similarly, only 58 of the 1175 legislation in the house have been passed, with the remaining 967 awaiting a second reading.
The research also cited a lack of attention to vital national issues such as agriculture, food security, and security, which account for a small percentage of overall bills.
Oke Epia emphasised that, despite the number of bills sponsored has increased, citizens must pay attention to their quality and impact.
However, he urged legislators, citizens, and parliamentary partners to take measures to promote effective legislative governance.
The programmer Executive at OrderPaper Nigeria, Joy Erurane, added that this year’s report included an in-depth sectoral analysis of legislation, noting the mismatch in sectoral representation and the pattern of bill sponsorship without follow-up.
She emphasised the importance of true legislative commitment in preventing “legislative plagiarism.”
