The Nigeria’s Senate President Ahmad Lawan has said that the 10th National Assembly will need more money for capacity building.
He said this came as many of those he described as experienced lawmakers did not win their re-election bids to the national assembly, in the February 25 elections.
He said the legislative Chambers would be necessitated to spend on capacity building to ensure that the new lawmakers perform well.
He said the loss of seats by many lawmakers every session cost the national assembly more money to bear
He made this revelation when the National Assembly Service Commission was presenting the assembly’s 2020, 2021 and 2022 annual reports of the activities.
The Informant247 learned that 306 out of the 426 lawmakers are new.
120 lawmakers got re-elected into the Parliament.
43 seats are vacant at the time of filing this report, as winners are yet to be announced in the concerned constituencies.
73 put of the 109 Senators are new, while 28 got re-elected.
Eight seats are still undecided.
233 of the 360 members of the House of Representatives are new comers.
92 got re-elected and 35 seats are currently undecided.
The Senate President said this development implies that more money would be needed for capacity building for new members.
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.”