NINE months after the inauguration of Nigeria’s 10th National Assembly (NASS), more than 150 lawmakers’ names are still missing on the NASS’ website, findings by The ICIR have shown.
The 10th NASS, comprising 109 Senate and 360 House of Representatives members, was inaugurated on June 13, 2023.
The inauguration followed Godwill Akpabio and Ibrahim Jibrin’s emergence as the Senate President and Deputy Senate President respectively, while Abbas Tajudeen and Benjamin Kalu were elected as the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.
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Filtering the data on the NASS website, The ICIR could not find the names of 40 senators and 134 Reps on the website.
Although, after the inauguration, some of the lawmakers were sacked by the court. As of the time of filing this report, all court proceedings over any lawmaker’s election have been resolved.
For instance, none of the three senators in Plateau State has their names on the NASS website.
The ICIR finding shows that the name on the website has been sacked by the court.
Another example is Ebonyi state with six House of Representative members, where only three names could be found on the website.
Additional findings also showed that four senators who have been sacked by the court still have their images on the website. These senators are Darlington Nwokeocha (Abia Central), Ishaku Abbo (Adamawa North), Ohere Abubakar (Kogi Central) and Mwaskwon Davou (Plateau North).
Aside from this, lawmakers’ names in the Senate like Edo and Ebonyi were not captured on the website. Also, some names of lawmakers in the House of Representatives were repeated twice.
The implication of this would mean that the Nigerian public might not be able to interact with the proceedings of the assembly, especially bills proposed by the lawmakers who are missing from the website.
In the 2024 budget, N344.85 billion was earmarked for the National Assembly. Although there is no breakdown of the budget, the expenditure takes care of the personnel and overhead costs of the Assembly.
The budget on Overhead takes care of bills and other utilities, including payment to IT officials or programmers to manage the website.
Find the sheet for the analysis here and a snapshot to all states on the NASS website here).
Kehinde Ogunyale tells stories by using data to hold power into account. You can send him a mail at jameskennyogunyale@gmail or Twitter: Prof_KennyJames | LinkedIn: Kehinde Ogunyale