High turnover of lawmakers very costly for legislature — Lawan

Senate President Ahmad Lawan says high turnover of experienced lawmakers at every session of the parliament is very costly for the legislature.

He spoke yesterday while receiving the 2020, 2021 and 2022 annual reports of the activities of the National Assembly Service Commission in Abuja.

Many experienced lawmakers will not be returning to the federal parliament when the 10th National Assembly will be inaugurated in June, having lost re-election, retired, or sought other offices.

Of the 426 members-elect, 306 are new lawmakers; while 120 were re-elected. Winners are yet to be declared for the remaining 43 seats.

Senate Presidency should be competence-based

Economic digitalization key to curbing crime, Senate spokesperson

The elections saw only 28 of the 109 senators re-elected; while 73 are new members. Eight seats are still vacant.

In the House of Representatives, of the 325 members-elect, only 92 were re-elected; while the 233 others are coming into the parliament as first-timers. 35 seats are yet to be occupied.

Lawan said there should be provisions for capacity building, especially for the new members of the 10th Assembly to achieve the set goals and targets.

He said: “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 and so forth. These are traits that you need to hit the ground running immediately.

“And I use the word costly deliberately because what this means is that, in the 10th Assembly, 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.

“Therefore, I’m using this channel to sound that advisory that the National Assembly will need money, will need more resources for capacity building for members of the National Assembly that are coming new as well as those staff that we’ll 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 because the tenth National Assembly.”