The Civil Soceity Organizations, the Media and all relevant stakeholders in promoting open parliamentary transparency, accountability and Civic participation have criticized the low level index of Nigerian parliament but urged to redouble efforts in achieving success
This expression came at a capacity building workshop for Media and Civil Soceity Partners, organized by Order Paper a none Governmental organization under the “POPULA PROJECT”
The POPULA PROJECT is meant to promote open parliament for upscaling legislative accountability, transparency and Civic participation of public in parliamentary activities
However presenting an overview of the performance of Open Parliamentary Index OPI among the west African Countries Mr Itia Otabor from the Centre for legislative Development LSD, indicated that the Nigerian index in that regard was low when compared to some smaller democratic countries in the continent not to talk of the larger democracies of the World despite the popular name of Nigeria the giant of Africa.
But Mr Otabor believed that was not something to worry much provided we can be able to improve in the areas we feel can produce positively in the three major indicators of Transparency, Civic participation and Accountability
He said the fundamental aspect of the workshop was to create awareness among the participants on the need to redouble efforts in sensitizing the representatives to understand their mandates of representation and the public on the other hand to know what are the requirements of their representatives in any legislative chamber be it at the local Government, state or federal levels
The participants in their various comments ,assessment and questions agreed unanimously on the need to focus more this time on the need for public participation
The participants based on this argued that generally many Nigerians either were not literate on the constitutional function of a legislature or they ignore it for their selfish interest, as such in most times they demand what is the responsibility of executive Arm from their representative, hence the need to educate them more on legislative function
Meanwhile some of the participants were of the view that Nigeria parliamentarians are doing their best in terms of openness of their activities but due to the high interest to come back for more time some legislatures ignore their constitutional responsibilities of making laws to chasing what will interest the electorates for them to have easy tickets for coming back to the parliament.
The project promised to continue with the sensitization so that in the near future all Stakeholders will realized the need to vegorousely joint hands in doing what is required to achieve the desired objectives and ensure transparency accountability and public.participation in the law making process for the benefit of all and sustainable democracy for good Governance in Nigeria .
Bashir M
