Sunday Aborisade in Abuja
The National Institute For Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), said it had commenced needs assessment of members of the National Assembly with a view to design training programme for them and their legislative aides.
The Director General of the institute, Prof. Abubakar Sulaiman, stated this yesterday at the end of a three-day Capacity Building Workshop for Legislative Aides of the National Assembly, in Abuja.
Sulaiman said: “As an Institute, we have embarked on needs assessment of the legislators and their pool of workforce in order to specially design training programmes/modules for enhancing the capacity needed in our legislative system.”
The NILDS DG stressed the need to upscale the level of expertise and professionalism in the legislative system to conform to international best practice.
He charged the legislative aides, to commit yourselves to innovation through research, by identifying problems and proffering solutions and also by initiating ideas for legislation.
He said: “Despite the enormous contributions made by legislative aides in supporting the work of the legislature, the knowledge gap to achieve optimal performance is still relatively wide.
“This state of affairs can only change by constant training and retraining and our Institute will not relent in bridging the knowledge gap for effective service delivery to the legislative arm of government.”
Sulaiman said the just concluded training programme was in line with the vision of the leadership of the 10th National Assembly to strengthen a professional workforce at all levels of National Assembly administration.
He therefore urged the participants to have it behind their minds that their support services to the smooth and effective functioning of the 10th Assembly cannot be overemphasized.
The DG said: “This is because legislators depend on legislative aides to conduct their legislative business.
“You must therefore not take this opportunity for granted because the success of the Assembly is directly proportional to your effective functioning and the performance as legislative aides who provide technical support to your principals.”
He added that the topics for the workshop were carefully selected to address specific areas of needs.
He therefore urged them to utilise and take advantage of the knowledge they had acquired in the course of the capacity building workshop in order to enhance your capacity and reposition themselves for effective service delivery.
