Acting Clerk to the National Assembly, Mr Olatunde Amos Ojo, has again restated his determination to transform the National Assembly “for better deliveries of constitutional responsibilities that is of international standard in lawmaking, representation and oversight.”
He made the declaration on Friday while hosting Centre for Legislative Engagement – an arm of Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA Africa) which paid him a courtesy visit in his office.
Towards this end, the CNA said his leadership would focus on training of staff of the National Assembly to build their individual capacity.
He equally revealed his mission to improve the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) available within the complex to make the operations of the legislature more open to the public and ultimately, enable Nigerians anxious for information on the nation parliament to get it at the click of a button.
He said: “Whatsoever we need to do for this, we have decided to make sure that we do it at this time. One among this is the training and retraining of our staff members inclusive of our legislative aides also because for us to achieve this aim, we know that our staff need training and retraining and we are pointed to make sure that this we do appropriately in conjunction with all ready organizations willing to support and back us up in this venture.
“I want to say that we have enormous environmental challenges that negatively impact on the work ethics and professional standard of the National Assembly bureaucracy.
“To this end, the management under my leadership will make sure that the work of the Assembly altogether, is done with utmost transparency, making sure that at all times everyone involved will be willing to do what he is expected to do and do it promptly also, the right way it should be done.
“Our capacity development therefore will be a continuous process, making sure that the knowledge gaps we have in the various parts of the National Assembly are filled up so that from any part of the National Assembly, if you pick a staff, he speaks and acts as a legislative bureaucrat.
“That is what we want to make sure we achieve and we are trusting that by the time we set this house properly definitely since it is our objective, God helping us we are going to attain it.
“On Information and Communication Technology (ICT), we all know that the world now is technologically united.
“So, we want to make sure that the National Assembly operates e-parliament and to operate e-parliament, we have to develop our ICT so that when anyone comes into the National Assembly, whether as a media man or you belong to one group or the other, you can easily log on and access anywhere in the world and we will make accessibility to lawmaking and everything on National Assembly free for everybody, the moment you enter into this place.
“I believe that by the time we are able to achieve this with discipline and integrity, there will be a proper transformed National Assembly to be able to deliver our purpose and objectives.”
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