By Femi Gbajabiamila
It’s now one 12 months for the reason that inauguration of the ninth Home of Representatives when my colleagues elected me because the Speaker. On that day, I dedicated to “use the legislative platform and the instrumentality of the regulation to make Nigeria a greater and extra excellent union”. I’ve, to the very best of my capacity, been holding to that dedication up to now 12 months.
I need to admit that it’s our destiny to have assumed workplace at a time of world upheaval, with relentless change, each meant and unintended, cascading throughout us to remake our world.
However as lawmakers, we now have been handed a chance to rebuild our nation, to lastly put Nigeria able to attain the greatness lengthy foretold but too lengthy unattained. We govern at a time of nationwide consensus in favour of radical change.
The Home had begun on this path final 12 months when, inside three months of our inauguration, we adopted a Legislative Agenda that was daring in its dedication to reform, particular in its aims and clear on the strategies to attain these functions.
We additionally dedicated to delivering a set price range cycle, and by December of 2019, we had accomplished precisely that. We dedicated to making sure that Nigerians, wherever they could dwell, at house and overseas, are all the time assured of the help and safety of the individuals’s Home. Time and time once more, we lived as much as that dedication in South Africa, in China and in every single place and each time the pursuits of our individuals have been endangered.
The ninth Home has persistently prolonged a hand of cooperation to organised labour. It has develop into a digital certainty that it’s to the Home that the representatives of labour will first flip to hunt decision of crises that have an effect on the welfare of their members and threaten to disrupt our financial system and important providers, together with schooling and healthcare.
Like us, organised labour on this nation represents extraordinary women and men who’re doing their greatest to supply for his or her households and be happy within the accomplishment of incomes a very good dwelling by the efforts of their very own fingers. When parliament joins in widespread trigger with labour, we reaffirm a historic partnership that accounts for a lot of the social progress on this planet during the last century.
Our interventions on these and different issues of nationwide significance didn’t intrude with or lower the tempo of our legislative output. We now have in our first 12 months, handed 37 long-awaited and much-anticipated laws, together with reforms of the federal authorities’s public procurement system, the Firm and Allied Issues Act and the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Manufacturing Sharing Contracts Act.
We now have proposed and handed laws to attain electrical energy sector reform, set up a strategy of presidential transition that ensures continuity in authorities and limits the opportunity of political or constitutional disaster arising from anticipated or sudden shifts of presidential energy.
We heard the cries of these Nigerians, who, dwelling with disabilities, have discovered their alternatives for development in schooling {and professional} prospects, curtailed and constrained.
We handed on their behalf, the Bodily Challenged (Empowerment) Invoice, 2019 to advertise accessibility and be certain that the limitations that stand in the best way of individuals attaining their desires now not exist. We now have delivered the Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan Invoice, and the Uncooked Supplies Analysis and Growth Council (Repeal and Re-Enactment) Invoice, each of which is able to place our nation on the trail to industrial self-sufficiency and financial development that lifts individuals out of poverty, creates jobs that pay a dwelling wage and ensures that extra of our individuals can contribute to the continued improvement of communities throughout the nation.
When the lethal Coronavirus arrived on our shores, it uncovered the structural weaknesses of our system. We didn’t foresee, nor have been we ready for the worldwide devastation of the COVID-19 illness. We weren’t able to battle an enemy of this nature, and our lack of preparation has precipitated quite a lot of loss and despair throughout our nation. We’re nonetheless vulnerable to extra extreme injury to our financial system and our nationwide safety. All of that is along with the prevailing menace of illness and lack of lives at a scale we won’t lengthy overlook. I pray for the unwell and the recovering, and I commit the dearly departed to a peaceable afterlife and ask for God’s grace on these they’ve left behind.
The ninth Home of Representatives responded to the emergence of the Coronavirus by passing in a single session, the Emergency Financial Stimulus Invoice as the primary response by any arm of presidency to the financial points that we foresaw could be the consequence of the arrival of this illness on our shores.
The Federal Authorities of Nigeria has lengthy since begun to undertake and implement provisions of that Invoice by granting deferrals on mortgage funds owed to federal authorities establishments and lifting tax restrictions on the importation of important medical items wanted within the battle towards COVID-19 within the nation.
I additionally arrange a COVID -19 Response Technique Group (CRST) to help the event and implementation of legislative interventions in response to the weaknesses which were revealed by our administration of the pandemic and the financial and social challenges arising therefrom.
As well as, members of the Home contributed two months of their salaries to the Fund to battle COVID-19 within the nation and impressed others to do the identical throughout the nation in no matter measure they might. We arrange an AdHoc Committee to hold out strong and joined-up oversight of the federal authorities’s response to COVID-19.
We advocated for and achieved better accountability and fairness within the allocation and distribution of palliatives to these of our residents most in want of help. We now have initiated and are dedicated to a complete overhaul of the statutory framework for managing Public Well being emergencies within the nation. As a part of the modification of the 2020 Appropriation Act, we offered the sum of 4 Billion Naira to supply for the welfare of docs in Nigeria. That is of explicit significance presently once we are managing the general public well being disaster of COVID-19 in Nigeria.
The alarming charge of assaults towards ladies and kids throughout Nigeria requires nothing in need of a state of emergency to mobilise authorities assets in direction of ending as soon as and for all of the scourge of sexual and gender-based violence in Nigeria.
To accommodate new realities, we resolved to conduct a evaluate of the Legislative Agenda of the Home of Representatives as step one in direction of designing a post-COVID plan to deal with the recognized weak spot of our nationhood. We are going to yearly return to that doc to appraise our efficiency and conduct a candid evaluation of our efforts.
I need to guarantee that I’ll all the time attempt to make sure the unity of the Home, recognising the actual issues of the completely different constituencies that make up our nice and beloved nation. I additionally guarantee all Nigerians of our ongoing dedication to our nation whose name we now have obeyed, whose trigger we now have sworn to defend till that day when peace and unity, justice and prosperity is the inheritance of all who fly our nation’s noble flag. With God on our facet, and with the help of our individuals, we won’t fail.
•Gbajabiamila is the Speaker of the Home of Representatives.
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