For the second time within two weeks, the House of Representatives will on Monday hold an emergency session, less than one week after it adjourned plenary till May 24, 2022.
Clerk of the House, Dr Yahaya Danzaria, in a notice issued on Saturday, said the emergency session was to discuss “critical issues of national importance.”
Neither the Senate nor the House holds plenary on Monday. The chambers sit on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Our correspondent, however, reports that electioneering has crippled legislative activities in the National Assembly, with several members absent from plenary and committee hearings in both the Senate and the House.
The Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Benjamin Kalu, said lawmakers were allowed to participate in political party primaries ahead of the 2023 general elections, beginning from this week.
Speaking on Thursday, Kalu said, “As you know, we have adjourned because of the political activities going on at the moment in the various political parties as allowed by the Electoral Act that we just passed. The timetable mandates the political parties to act within a specific timeframe so as to be in compliance with that enactment.
“It presupposes that members of the of the parliament, who are also active participants in the current electoral programme, would be given sufficient time to ensure that they are not disenfranchised, either by showcasing themselves to the electorate and getting them to fill the necessary forms, which are the plenary stages of whatever they want to become, or supporting the candidates of their choice.
“So, it is time to sit more in our constituencies at least for a week or so and be back. So, we would be back on the 24th of May to look at other pertinent national issues.”
Meanwhile, Nigeria will be hosting speakers and heads of parliaments from across Africa from Monday at a three-day event.
Gbajabiamila will be hosting his counterparts in other African countries at the 1st Conference of Speakers and Heads of African Parliaments, which was inspired by the Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila.
The National Assembly had appropriated N150m for the maiden edition of the CoSaP conference in the 2022 Appropriation Act. Punch
