Lawan seeks capacity building for 10th NASS

Ahmad Lawan, president of the Nigerian Senate, has called for capacity building for members of the incoming 10th National Assembly for efficient and effective service delivery.

He made the call while receiving the 2020, 2021 and 2022 annual reports of the activities of the National Assembly Service Commission.

“What is critical to us is what happens when we leave. Everybody knows the turnover rate has been very costly and this is without prejudice to anybody elected.

“Costly in the sense that when you have only about 30 percent of members of the ninth National Assembly going to 10th Assembly, you know that you have lost capacity, you have lost experience; you have lost skills, enterprise and so on. These are traits that you need to hit the ground running immediately.

“And I use the word costly deliberately because we must make provisions immediately for capacity building for new members of the National Assembly if we want to achieve our goals and set targets.

“Everybody is enthusiastic. Everybody is ready. We want to come in and continue to contribute to making Nigeria better. But the parliament is not like the executive.

“Therefore, I am using this channel to sound that advisory that the National Assembly will need money and more resources for capacity building for incoming new members as well as the staff they will be working with.

“I also want to urge here that the National Assembly Service Commission, the management of the National Assembly, as well as the management of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies will have their hands full.”

The Senate president also asked for the support of the National Assembly Service Commission for the incoming lawmakers.

“We want your support. It is the National Assembly membership that is always changing. You will give us the kind of support that will make us do so well.

“Whatever we have achieved wouldn’t have been achieved without the National Assembly Service Commission and the staff of the National Assembly.

“In fact, the staff have been very wonderful, very supportive and we believe that this is the kind of staff that we should always have and also as an assembly, as a commission, we need to continue to give the staff the kind of motivation that they need,” Lawan said.