Judge us based on bills, motions sponsored, reps chief whip tells Nigerians

Tahir Monguno, chief whip of the house of representatives, says the yardstick for measuring the performance of lawmakers should be the number of bills and motions sponsored.

Monguno spoke on Wednesday during a presentation of the report on the independent performance appraisals of the 9th national assembly organised by OrderPaper Advocacy Initiative (OAI).

Monguno said Nigerians need to be educated on the primary functions of lawmakers.

He commended OrderPaper for “raising the bar” in informing Nigerians on the constitutional duties of legislators.

“The primary responsibility of a legislator is to make law for the peace, order and good governance of the country,” he said.

“Therefore, the barometer for measuring the performance of a legislator is by the number of bills and motions he has sponsored on the floor of the house.”

Also speaking, Toby Okechukwu, deputy minority leader of the house, said the assessment should also include the level of impact of the bills sponsored by a lawmaker.

“It is also very critical that you make an assessment of how impactful these bills have been. What’s the level of impact on the Nigerian public? Not just the preponderance and also not just the number,” he said.

“It is very important to check to what extent it adds value and the originality of bills. So, I think you’ve got a lot of work to do, those that have been signed, those that are much more impactful to the public. With these, you can begin to benchmark yourself on what to do by the 10th assembly.”

While addressing the lawmakers, Oke Epia, executive director of OrderPaper, said the national assembly has over the years received “less informed scrutiny” compared to the other arms of government — executive and judiciary

“While this document does not exhaustively address all the reasons behind this state of affairs, it identifies that citizens have not been availed of valid, scientific and empirical basis to interrogate the performance of their representatives in parliament,” he said.

“This work goes beyond identifying this fact to proffer solutions by setting objective metrics for sufficiently measuring the performance of members of the national assembly. It then goes on to apply data exclusively obtained from the records of the national assembly, in addition to deploying the niche experience and exposure of OrderPaper in its work with the parliament over the years.

“This document is, therefore, an abridged version of a comprehensive three years report card of the 9th national assembly of Nigeria from June 2019, when it was inaugurated, till May 2022.

“It speaks to the criteria and metrics used for the performance appraisals and provides a summary of the detailed report card, which will be disseminated in categories.”