By Naomi Sharang
African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), a Civil Society Organisation, has called for a transparent, accountable and more public participatory parliament.
The Director of Strategy of the group, Mr Itia Otabor, made the call on Thursday, in Abuja, at a capacity building for Media and Civil Society Partners on “Open Parliament Index (OPI)”.
The OPI is a project by the Nigeria Network of Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that OrderPaper Advocacy Initiative, is leading the implementation of “The Promoting Open Parliament for Upscaling Legislative Accountability (POPULA) project.
Otabor, who said that the OPI was launched on July 20, 2022 added that the the project sought to assess parliaments across Africa, using the criteria of civic participation and public accountability.
“Six countries including Nigeria, were selected to further upscale the results and engage with the national parliament.
“Nigeria was selected as one of those six countries. You see the project is called promoting the parliament in upscaling legislative accountability.
“Even after Nigeria was shortlisted sometime last year, we had to wait for approval and orders which we got toward the end of last year and implementation started this year.”
“We are hoping that the OPI will become a mechanism, a vehicle that we can achieve the institutionalisation of the performance measurement that will engender a much more transparent and accountable and public participatory parliament.
“The basic thing we intend to achieve is to popularise the index. And that is by working with our parliament by working with citizens and the CSOs in terms of popularising the index.
“If we popularise the index, especially the indicators that went into the result that was published in the index it will help to promote transparency accountability and civic participation in our national parliament,” he said.
Chairperson, House of Representatives Press Corps, Grace Ike said promoting open parliament for upscaling legislative accountability could not be over emphasised
She said that journalism was one of the few jobs people were employed and unfortunately left to their devices without periodic training.
“It is even worse for parliamentary reporters. In most cases they have to go out of their way to sponsor themselves to attend courses.”
Ike further said that the parliament was the most misunderstood arm of government and its assessment had been a subject of controversy over time.
“It is therefore the responsibility of parliamentary reporters to enlighten the people on how the lawmakers carry out their functions.
“Hence, a workshop of this nature is key in further educating and equipping journalists who cover activities of the legislature on the best criteria or methods for properly assessing legislators.”(NAN)
