By Gift Chapi Odekina
The Clerk of the House of Representatives, Dr. Yahaya Danzaria, has pledged to continually boost the capacity of staff for maximum efficiency in service delivery.
Danzaria said this at the end of a three-day training programme organized in collaboration with SAHL Human Resources for staff of the House, on Law Making Processes in the National Assembly. The Clerk said the training would be the first in a series that would be organized for the staff of the House of Representatives.
His words: “We know the inherent docility with which we inherited the directorate. So we are trying boost the morale of the staff that is why we have arranged this three-day training. This one is a general training that cuts across all the departments.
“The second one is going to be a specialized training and my management staff are already working on it. We are going to concentrate on the chamber staff, the bills and other adjoining support services staff. The last one would be a hybrid training, more of committee secretaries and committee clerks and other departments which would come before the end of the year.
“We believe that this type of training would boost their morale and it would add impetus to their contributions to the plenary work,” Danzaria said.
A Deputy Clerk of the House and former chairman of the Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria (PASSAN), National Assembly chapter, Bature Musa, said the training was a welcome development.
He said, “Society is dynamic and you have to capture society in motion. It is a global phenomenon that organizations of this repute and an arm of the government needs to equip its staff periodically to be at par with world legislation and that is what informed this very workshop to be organized by the new clerk of the House of Representatives.
“The takeaway from the training for me is that as a deputy clerk in the House of Reps I have been to understand that there are two types of oversighting. It has broadened my knowledge on how to approach this oversighting from the angle of legislators and MDAs to be oversighted.
“So it has really enriched us in terms of oversighting and legal drafting as well. We have also been briefed on how legal drafters try to fine tune any legal policies that emanated from the legislator and it is a very welcome workshop.”
Another staff of the House, Musa Abdulahi, works in the Office of Director Management Services expressed gratitude for the training which he said would enable the staff to carry out their duties more efficiently.
“I would like to thank initiator of this programme and the officer that made it possible for us to be here to take more knowledge to improve on the one we have already gotten. Part of what we have learnt here is the technical knowhow on how to participate in the motions, going to the bills and bills transmitted to the presidency for assent.
“We have learnt that the bill has to be concurred by both houses and were able to fish out if there are any difficulties, where there is error of principles, error of commission, error of omissions. We learnt how at committee level, such can be rectified. It is an additional knowledge to what we have been having. We have been able to know the technical know-how on how a bill is drafted. The legal aspects of the bill,” Abdullahi said.
Another staff of the House of Representatives, Zainab Almustapha, also lauded the training and urged that it be sustained to equip them to work better.
“I was exposed to ethics and privilege of legislators. Also we were taught bill processes in the National Assembly.
I would use the knowledge to bring bear on my day to activities and work in the office. It is a wonderful development. We have not had this kind of training in a long time. It is excellent training. We have learnt and would work with what we have learnt,” she said.
