Nigeria’s Parliament Goes Digital, House of Reps. Installs Devices for Plenary

Speaker of the House, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila, led journalists on inspection of the newly installed devices on Friday and said the e-parliament will engender public trust and enhance citizen understanding and participation in the decision-making process.

“it is a promise kept. This is one of the things we promised we will do in the 9th assembly and we are happy that this can be found in any advanced democracy,’’ he said.

The newly installed digital devices will ensure the 360 members of the country’s lower chamber have full access to information in real-time during plenary with Gbajabiamila saying the move was in fulfillment of the houses’ legislative agenda of ensuring that e-parliament proceedings are adopted.

Gbajabiamila noted that the system will ensure capacity building for members to research on the floor on any information or references they so desired.

He said e-attendance was also included to know the number of members present.

Spokesman of the House of Representatives, Honourable Benjamin Kalu, said members will be trained upon resumption so as to ensure familiarity with the new system of lawmaking.

He said the lower chamber is adopting the e-parliament technology in order to be at par with other parliaments globally that run paperless systems and use electronic voting procedures during plenary.