The Senate
Leader, Ali Ndume, has expressed worry that the low ICT literacy level
among members of the National Assembly may hinder the effective
operation of e-legislation being proposed in the house.
According to him, the e-legislation when
introduced is expected to engender “robust and effective debates’’ at
the National Assembly as members are expected to have received details
of bills early enough to prepare for discussions.
“We are facing some hitches in this
direction as some senators are not ICT compliant. But we will move on as
time goes by,” he said.
E-legislature is a proposed
electronic social platform in form of a mobile application and website,
which will serve as a bridge between citizens of Nigeria and their
elected representatives in the house of parliament.
Ndume said that the introduction of electronic legislation
was part of the initiative of the Buhari led administration to make the
National Assembly more vibrant, in the sense that current bills and
legislation on- going in the state and national assembly can be
displayed online, along with detailed analysis of the bills, 24 hours
before deliberation in order to prepare members ahead of the next day’s
sitting.
“In the past, senators only got ideas of
the day’s legislative business when they picked the order paper at the
chamber. This made it difficult for them to contribute effectively in
the debate on the floor but we changed that now, and have started
sending the order paper to senators, using their e-mail addresses. This
is done early enough to prepare them for active debate,” he said.
With the introduction of E-legislature, constituency
members would be able to vote for or against any proposed bill on the
online platform and members can track the outcome of whatever their
representatives are voting for and what reasons are being given for each
decision.
He said that this new system will enable citizens to
comment on new bills or propose new bills that can be easily accessed by
their representatives in parliament just by the click of a button.
“By the time a debate is going on, any Nigerian will be able to follow and even take sides.”
Also, online question and answer sessions with
representatives can be organized with E-legislation and this generally
makes the voice of the grassroots heard.
Although the numerous advantages of the e-legislation have
been stated, some still express concern as to whether or not Nigerian
senators are ready for this development. Those
who commented on the issue stated that the country has more pressing
issues to deal with than being concerned with the literacy or illiteracy
of Nigerian legislatures and that Nigerian legislatures are looking for an avenue to create an extra budget for something irrelevant.
The Executive Director, Civil Society
Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Auwal Ibrahim Musa, clarified
these concerns and disagreed with the Senate leader’s conclusion that
ICT illiteracy will hinder the efficiency of E-legislature. Ibrahim said
the introduction of electronic legislature is not what many people
think it is and that it is not compulsory for members of the houses to
be ICT compliant. According to him, “this new development is just about
making legislative processes electronic. For instance, voting should be
done electronically instead of members of the house shouting ‘Yay’ or
‘Nay’, publication of the National Assembly debates online and
information on the proceedings should be available on the internet
through their website. It is basically to put these documents in
electronic form so that Nigerians can access and review them”.
When asked if the members are using this
as an avenue to create another unnecessary budget to cover expenses
involved in training some of the members of the legislature who are not
ICT literate. He said no, because “this is not going to be done by the
National Assembly members but by the National Assembly bureaucrat who
are in charge of putting all these infrastructures in place.”
JUMOKE AKIYODE
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