BEVERLY HILLS, July 23, (THEWILL) – The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has indicated its interest to partner with the National Assembly, especially the Senate.
NLC President, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, made this known when he visited the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, in his office Thursday.
According to Wabba, “Our leadership is ready to partner with the 8th National Assembly in general and the 8th Senate in particular, so that together, we will work to transform our country from a country that is perpetually tall on ‘potentials’ to a truly great nation with solid democratic foundation, sound democratic principles and dependable public institutions.
“One of the promises we made to Nigerian workers upon which we were elected is that we will revamp our parliamentary interactions at both the national and state levels. From the time Senator Anyim Pius Anyim was Senate President, the NLC had asked for, and was promised an office space in the National Assembly for our Parliamentary Liaison Office to operate from.
“Regrettably till this moment, the various leadership of the National Assembly since then failed to fulfill this request, which we gathered was granted. Despite new structures been added to the National Assembly complex, we have been unlucky, so to say, because we are aware that a number of such requests, including of businesses, have been given some times express approval over the years.
“Your Excellency, we wish to represent this request once again. We want to emphasise that having a liaison office within the National Assembly will give us enhanced accessibility to do proper legislative advocacy.
“You may recall that your predecessor in office, Senator David Mark, sometimes ago complained that the State Houses of Assembly were glorified rubber stamps to state governors. Our plan is to use our National Assembly Liaison Office to train liaison officers for the state level legislature to also provide for a robust engagement with the lawmaking process at that level.
“Our aim in having the Parliamentary Liaison Office, which has since been in place at the level of the NLC National Secretariat, is to partner with the National Assembly and to have enough staff employed to enable us engage the legislative processes meaningfully and to add value to it.
“This has been a productive practice in South Africa where our counterpart, COSATU, has a parliamentary office in Pretoria, in Ghana where the Ghana-TUC has parliamentary officers and in the USA where the AFL-CO has a team of parliamentary officers working with Congress.”
About the Author
