Towards Common Ground for Legislative Development - Global Legislators Brainstorm in Chicago USA
In a bid to evolve innovative, creative and more pragmatic ways of dealing with issues of common concern and emerging global challenges in legislative practices and procedures across legislative and Parliamentary jurisdictions, a critical number of members of Nigeria’s legislature, recently participated in a global conference for State Legislators.
Participation was drawn from Europe, America, Asia and other parts of Africa. The annual international summit held under the aegis of the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL). The Summit is one of the largest gatherings of leaders in the legislative and parliamentary institutions, comprising experts and policymakers working to find practical and sustainable solutions to common concerns among parliamentary institutions.
With over 1,000 participants drawn from about 20 countries, delegates engaged their counterparts from other legislature in a weeklong-robust discussions.
The objective was to identify common grounds for collaboration, share experiences with high performing legislatures/parliaments with a view to learning lessons from their success stories and discover their commonalities with other jurisdictions. This is against the background of relevant studies that there is a common element present in every parliament the world over.
Coming with a paradigm shift, over 30 sectoral sessions were held on issues ranging from: criminal justice system, education, health care, economy, budgetary matters, taxes etc. The forum also set the framework and agenda for legislative development and provided a roadmap for NCSL’s advocacy efforts.
Participants were able to build stronger synergy and forge wider networks among legislative institutions.
The NCSL has over the years, continued to provide a platform for leading discussions around the most pressing issues among member parliaments.
NCSL is a bipartisan organization committed to providing research, technical assistance and opportunities for policymakers to exchange ideas.
Coming against the background of the ongoing implementation of Legislative reforms in the National Assembly, particularly, the budget reform initiative which is a fundamental component of the Legislative Agenda of the 8th National Assembly and the recent directive by the Senate President, Dr, Bukola Saraki on budget reform, this year’s conference is very critical to Nigeria’s legislative development as issues of budget also took the frontline of discussions during the conference.
The summit has in attendance considerable number of members of the country’s legislature drawn from the Senate, the House of Representatives, state Houses of Assembly legislators and the Director General, National Institute for Legislative Studies.
0 comments: