One Year in Office: CSO’s Rate 9th Kwara House of Assembly Poor, Says They Only Introduces One New Bill

By Editor

Kwara based Civil Society Organisation, Elites Network for Sustainable development (ENetSuD) has rated the 9th State House of Assembly poor in area of their primary assignment.

This was disclosed by the coordinator of the Organisation, Dr. Alagbonsi Abdullateef while presenting one year assessment report of the 9th Kwara State House of Assembly headed by the Rt. Hon. Salihu Yakubu Danladi as Speaker.

According to the ENetSuD report, “To the best of our knowledge, we are aware that 10 bills were received by the 9th Assembly in the last one year. Out of these 10 bills, only 8 have been passed by the Assembly and assented to by the Governor, while the remaining 2 have not been attended to by the Assembly”

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“Out of the 8 bills that were passed, 3 emanated from the Governor as executive bills while 5 emanated from the Honorable Members of the Assembly. The 3 executive bills include the Revised Appropriation Bill (2019), Kwara State Social Investment Program Bill (2019) and the Appropriation Bill (2020)”

“Two among the 5 bills from the legislators were sponsored by Hon. Muhammad Baba Salihu representing Okuta/Yashikira Constituency of Baruten LGA. He sponsored the Teaching Service Commission (Amendment) Bill (2019) and Compulsory, Free Universal Basic Education (Amendment) Bill (2019).

The remaining 3 bills were separately sponsored by 3 lawmakers. The Kwara State University (Amendment) Bill (2019), Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) Bill (2019), and Sports Commission Bill (2019) were respectively sponsored by Hon. Wahab Opakunle (Afon Constituency, Asa LGA), Hon. Ganiu Salaudeen (Omupo Constituency, Ifelodun LGA), and Hon. Mogaji Olawoyin (Mogaji Ngeri Constituency, Ilorin West)”, ENetSuD said.

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ENetSuD, Explain further, that “only 1 new bill was introduced by the lawmakers in the last one year in office, while the remaining 4 bills were amendments of existing laws. “Out of the 5 bills initiated/sponsored by the lawmakers, only 1 of them is a new bill while the remaining 4 are amendments of certain provisions of already existing laws of Kwara State inherited by the lawmakers”

“The only new one is the Sports Commission Bill (2019) sponsored by Hon. Mogaji Olawoyin. This means that during the first year in office of the 9th KWHA, 12.5% of the laws made for Kwarans are new, 50% of the laws are amendment to the existing ones, while 37.5% are proposals from the executive (including budgets)”.

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ENetSuD, however urged the KWHA to be more proactive to their primary responsibility and give more priority to bills (in the form of ideas, innovations and proposals) that originate from its members and members of the public, so as to promote democracy and encourage participatory governance.