The Bureaucracy in the National Assembly is pushing for the establishment of a Legislative Institute to train staff members on the legislative process.  But the headship of of the policy Analysis and Research Project (PARP) which is the research wing of the Assembly is fighting to stall that agenda,  writes Sufuyan Ojeifo:

What is the quality of motions and bills that members of the National Assembly sponsor on the floor?  How elegantly crafted are they?  How elevated is the language?  How grammatically compliant are the motions and bills in their syntactical flows and/or structures?  The answers are blowing in the wind in and around the chambers of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Legislators are busy people.  They keep playing politics round the clock.  As they do that, they attend to legislative business in the chamber and at the committee level.  Many of them who are into diverse kinds of business and other engagements outside politics also devote quality time to them in order to make money to oil their political machinery.

Ideally, these should not tell on their participation in legislative activities.  Reason: they have legislative aides/assistants to do research for them and package their motions and bills.  They do these in concert with consultants, especially on the drafting of bills and analysis of technical details that come out of investigative or public hearings.

But the output of the legislative aides has largely been below average; and this is understandable.  Not much on-the-job experience has been garnered since the advent of the Fourth Republic democracy in 1999.  How much of on-the-job training has been given to them alongside staff members of the National Assembly who work in the various standing committees of both chambers?

How well can legislators, their aides and National Assembly bureaucrats interpret technical reports by consultants on such issues as aviation, power, economy and petroleum, among others, without being deliberately misguided into taking unintended actions and/or decisions?  These are the issues that the National Assembly Management has been trying to solve with the proposed establishment of a Legislative Institute, something akin to Public Service College, to train staff members of the National Assembly and legislative aides on the nitty-gritty of the Legislature.

Apart from the training, the National Assembly Management, as learnt, has always wanted an Institute that would also be responsible for examining and/or conducting promotion examinations for staff members, a role which is currently being played by the Centre for Management Development (CMD).  A top bureaucrat questioned a situation where CMD, which knows little about the Legislature, should be the one to conduct promotions examinations for National Assembly staff members.

In fact, the plan to set up a Legislative Institute was conceived in 2007 by the Clerk of the National Assembly (CNA), Prince Oluyemi Ogunyomi, who was then the Deputy Clerk of the National Assembly (DCNA).  The idea of the Institute was to fill the yawning gap between goal setting and achievement created by lack of utilitarian training of personnel that are saddled with the task of driving the process.

THISDAY gathered that the Policy Analysis and Research Project (PARP)-the research wing of the National Assembly- which has existed since 2002 could not effectively fill the yawning gap.  PARP's attention has been significantly focused on capacity building programmes for members of the National Assembly.  This is articulated in its work-plan activities of bills and policy analyses, research reports, trainings including conferences, seminars, workshops, short courses, exchange of experience and data bank development, among others.

The inability of PARP to do effectively and on a structured basis take care of the sustained training of staff members of the National Assembly, as learnt, underscored the imperative of the Institute, which is seeking legislative nod to take off.  It was learnt that although PARP has organised training workshops and seminars, short courses, conferences, consultative fora and attachments for management staff members of the National Assembly, Committee Clerks and Official Reporters, insiders in the National Bureaucracy argue that this is largely ad-hoc and that, in fact, this role by PARP should be complementary to the structured and sustained training that would be offered by the National Assembly Legislative Institute.

THISDAY gathered that a bill to set up the Institute was to have been gazette and listed on the order papers in the House of Representatives and the Senate, but intrigues have stalled the process.  There are feelers that some powerful forces in the PARP, acting in concert with some influential leaders of the Senate and the House, have moved to supplant the Institute with a grandiose plan to transform PARP into the National Institute of Legislative Studies.  The move is about to crystallize in both chambers where an amendment bill is to be introduced by the Chairman of the Rules and Business Committee in the Senate, Alloysius Etok and his counterpart in the House, Ita Enang.

Whereas, a Bill for the Establishment of National Assembly Legislative Institute as conceived by the Bureaucracy is being frustrated from seeing the light of day; the Joint Steering Committee (JSC) of PARP, under the Chair of Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu with Deputy Speaker, Usman Bayero Nafada as Alternate Chair, has, as learnt, adopted the modification of the Bill introduce by the Executive arm of government on the establishment of the Centre for Democratic Studies (CDS) into the National Institute of Legislative Studies.

The JSC leadership, comprising Deputy Senate President, Deputy Speaker, Chair of Senate Committees on Judiciary, Appropriation, Rules and Business and National Planning; Chair of the House Committees on Appropriation, National Planning, Rules and Business, Judiciary, Special Adviser (Political) to the Senate President, Chief of Staff to the Speaker and Clerk of the National Assembly (as Secretary), plans to push it though as the Amendment Bill.

It was gathered that the National Assembly wants to refocus the Bill so that since most of the functions of the Bill as originally conceived are for the Legislature, the powers to appoint the leadership of the Institute should be vested in the Senate President and not in the President of the country.  But analysts contend that National Assembly Institute for the training of staff members of the National Assembly and for the conduct of their promotion examinations should not be eclipsed because of the proposed establishment of CDS which the political leadership of the National Assembly is planning to restructure into the National Institute of Legislative Studies.

THISDAY gathered that there is lingering fear that the politicking around the issue has the imprimatur of the PARP leadership, which wants it (PARP) to transform into the National Institute of Legislative Studies.  This, as claimed, has the potentialities of ensuring that the political leadership of the Legislature does not give its nod to the establishment and/or take-off of the National Assembly Legislative Institute.  Hamalai, in a telephone interview with THISDAY, confirmed that move to transform PARP into an institute started during the era of former Deputy Senate President, Alhaji Ibrahim Mantu (who was then the Chair of the JSC of PARP).

She said that Mantu even went to the United States with the then Deputy Speaker, Austin Opara, adding that the current Clerk of the National Assembly (Ogunyomi) discussed with her in 2007 (when he was Deputy Clerk of the National Assembly) that the institute should be started.  According to her, "We developed the document and gave it to Mantu; we met over it and adopted it in 2007."

Hamalai stated that thereafter, Ogunyomi said that he no longer wanted to do it through the PARP, that he wanted to do it differently.  But it was learnt that the ensuing muscle-flexing weighed in favour of Hamalai's PARP because of the questionable close-knit collaboration between PARP's leadership and the political leadership of the National Assembly.  The JSC was said to have done a Bill in 2009 and Etok sent it for gazetting in the Senate and Enang did the same in the House.

However, it was gathered that at a JSC meeting, two members were said to have kicked against the existence of another Bill, apparently the one by the National Assembly Management, which has been packaged by a consultant, on the grounds that it was presented to the House for gazetting by outsiders to the JSC "when the JSC has been the one working on the Bill for the Institute."   Indeed, the Institute needs an Act of the National Assembly to take off.  But which Institute will finally sail through the National Assembly Legislative Institute (as conceived by the National Assembly Management) or the National Institute of Legislative Studies (which the JSC of PARP, acting in concert with the political leadership of the National Assembly, wants PARP to transform into through the modification of the executive Bill on CDS)?

On its part, PARP has been operating without a law backing it up.  It was activated in November 2002 by the consent of the Senate and the House of Representatives through a motion moved and seconded.  According to a published report of the Senate proceedings where the establishment of PARP was approved, "Pursuant to rule 14 of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the Senate do approve the establishment of a Policy Analysis and Research Project in the National Assembly."

Coordinator of PARP, Dr. Ladi Hamalai, had said in a press interview thus: "Going by the content of the above gazette, it is clear that the establishment of PARP was not in phases and therefore goes without saying that the motion covers the existence of the Project as a capacity building agency of the National Assembly.  On the other hand, it is worthy to note that unless there is change of its objectives and name, PARP's existence is covered by that instrument."

Indeed, by it's the manner of its conception and design, PARP is to collaborate and has in fact been collaborating with organizations such as the US Congress; Canadian Parliament; Belgian Parliament, Netherlands' Parliament; the British House of Commons; the World Bank, Embassies of Israel, Canada and Belgium; National Planning Commission; Centre for Legislative Affairs in Ghana; Nigeria Investment Promotion Council; Nigerian Economic Summit Group; United Nations Development Programme; Commonwealth Parliament of Australia and African Institute for Applied Economics, among others.  PARP, analysts contend, has done very well in this regard and should continue with this mandate rather than seek to transform into an Institute.

But THISDAY learnt that control of the multi-million dollars annual funding of the PARP is at the root of the intrigues that have delayed the takeoff of the National Assembly Legislative Institute.  It is feared, as learnt that once the Institute takes off, the National Assembly Management will its annual stop funding contribution to PARP.  For instance, this year, PARP will benefit from a $7.1 million funding programme to be jointly contributed by the National Assembly Management, the Senate, the House of Representatives and the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) based in Harare, Zimbabwe.

The National Assembly Management, as learnt, is contributing $3.4 million to PARP while both the Senate and the House of Representatives are contributing $1.6 million apiece.  The ACBF is contributing $500,000.  In fact, it was learnt that the funding programme has been laid out since 2008.  On Tuesday, March 18, 2008, the NASS and ACBF based in Harare, Zimbabwe, signed the Second Phase of their Grant Agreement on the building of capacity for National Assembly members and bureaucrats.  The ACBF, a foundation made up of 23 African countries and 11 non-African countries and donor agencies, is said to be charged with the responsibility of building capacity and strengthening human and institutional capacities on the African continent.

Under the Phase Two regime, NASS has provided $10 million to be able to draw down a counterpart funding by the ACBF to the tune of $2 million.  The $12 million will cover a four year period, to wit: 2008-2012. Although, the $12 million looks princely, it was said to be about ten times smaller than the real amount that PARP, the training arm of the NASS, which is managing the money, required to fund its myriad activities.

Hamalai had told THISDAY in 2008 that the Project would be home and dry in terms of delivering on its daunting, yet achievable mandate with a whopping $120 million.  But then, the NASS-ACBF intervention was considered good against the backdrop of the plan which was then unfolded by the political decision-making wing of the Federal Legislature to transform PARP into a Legislative Training and Research Institute.

Senate President, David Mark, had made this disclosure at the signing of the Second Phase of the Grant Agreement in Abuja.    According to Mark, "The National Assembly is planning to transform PARP into a legislative training and research institute. The expected constituencies of the Institute will include the National Assembly, the 36 State Legislatures in Nigeria, National and Regional Parliaments within and outside West Africa."

He had stated that the success of the first phase informed the decision to proceed with the second phase.  Acccording to him, in the first phase, which began in 2002, the executive board of ACBF approved a grant of $2 million dollars while the National Assembly provided $1.324 Million as its counterpart funds for the establishment of PARP.

Mark had further stated: "There was a reversal in the second phase. While the ACBF is to provide $2 million, the National Assembly is to provide $10 million," and had confirmed that the proposed expenditure was captured in the 2008 budget of the National Assembly.  This, no doubt, confirms the information that the plan to transform PARP into an institute has been on for long.

But the tension in the National Assembly and the concern within the management circles stem from the intrigues and politicking that have crept into the situation such that the proposed National Assembly Institute for training and promotion of staff members, among others, is being threatened by the proposed National Institute of Legislative Studies, which to the political leadership of the Legislature, acting in concert with the leadership of PARP, is the bigger deal.  This is despite the fact that the focus of both embryonic institutes is fundamentally different even though there could be areas of overlap.