…as NESG seeks better laws to improve ease of doing business
By Levinus Nwabughiogu-Abuja
Deputy Speaker, House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu has said that the 10th National Assembly will priotize healthy pieces of legislations that will impact the economy positively.
He said that the House was in tandem with the executive arm of the government to better the lots of the citizenry haven studied the national objective of the current administration.
Kalu’s assurance came as a response to the request of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) whose officials in the National Assembly Business Environment Roundtable of the Nigeria led by Tayo Adeloju paid him a courtesy visit in his office on Thursday.
Kalu said: “You have decided to come at the formative stage of the 10th Assembly so that whatever comes out of it is going to reflect on the legislative instrument we are going to use.
“The 10th Assembly is currently cooking its legislative agenda and one of the key issues we will be prioritizing is the issue of economy of the nation. I saw you highlighting the issue of Executive/Legislative relationship and the key policy issues and bills that should take the centre stage.
“The thinking is that the core thinking of the current administration is national objectives and since we have studied the key objective of the administration, it is our mindset that though we are three arms of government, we are one government.
“So, if the national objective is about improving the nation and its people, all we have to do in partnership with strategic stakeholders is to push out legislative interventions in motions and bills that will help them get that done.
“The 10th Assembly will not only be interested in bills and motions. We will be looking at transformational bills that will impact positively on the business environment so that it becomes better than we met it, bills that will enable the Nigeria Commonwealth which we are committed to. Bills that will clearly state the mischief in our nation economically and how that will be cured by the bills and not just having so many bills without any social economic impact. So, our bills will be impact driven.
“We will make sure that we are rated not by the number of bills, but the social impact that those bills make in the country. You are seeking to do well in our ease of doing business and increase in our global percentage in competitiveness and improve the ranking in our development index. We cannot achieve this if the bills are not tailored with it in mind.”
Earlier in his presentation, Adeloju told Kalu the the last 24 years have been very challenging for the nation, adding that the country was in dire need of laws that would give a facelift to the Nigerian business climate.
He added that the 10th Assembly has a crucial role to play in the revival of the nation’s economy.
“As you settle down to work for the next four years to work, we must push laws that allow microeconomics stability to happen. We must push laws that put binding constrains on investments coming to stay in Nigeria.
“We must allow laws that allow for inclusive participation in our economy and economic system and we must remove the old legislative legal gridlock that has made major sectors of our economy,-transportation, infrastructure, power etc not reach their height.
“You have our pledge for support and commitment to work with you. We have about 3000 volunteers that are willing and available to work with your committee chair and yourself.
“Partnership is what we seek because when we work together, we work faster. There are very difficult issues to debate if Nigeria must move forward. Call us anytime and there will a cream of Nigerians ready to work to deliver a country of our dreams.
“Even in the period of high growth in the last 24 years, we struggled with making it inclusive and we have had jobless growth. Unfortunately, in the last eight years, we have been through two recessions, one pandemic that has left our country with 133 million poor people and an economy that desperately need. Restructuring.
“We envisaged some of these challenges in 2015 and so we convened a summit which unanimously agreed that the survival of the economy should be built around legislation. So, from 2016 to date, the NESG has convened specific legislative sessions to give impetus to the fact that there is no economic growth without legislative involvement.
“We think that this 10th Assembly can play basketball crucial role in the growth of the economy”, Adeloju said.
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