The Nigerian National Assembly resumes this week after nearly five weeks break. Law makers had adjourned sitting last December in the euphoria of successful passage of the 2020 National Budget- the first time the budget would be passed ahead of its commencement year. As the National Assembly resumes sitting, expectations are high that it will immediately put focus into taking on key pending Bills, including the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, the Petroleum Industry Bill, Police Reform Bill, Companies and Allied Matters Act (Amendment) Bill, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the\nPetroleum Industry Bill, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre\nSylva has in recent weeks talked about ensuring its passage before June, 2020.\nThis would seem ambitious, yet desirable as the Bill has spent the last 12\nyears in legislative process without seeing light of the day. Another key Bill\nof interest to Nigerians is the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill. President\nBuhari had in a meeting with officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission\n(INEC) and the security chiefs in January, committed to leaving a legacy of\nelectoral reform. It is to be noted that the 8th<\/sup> National Assembly\nhad passed amendments to the Electoral Act, which the President denied assent\nto, on the grounds that the amendments were coming too close to the elections.\nNigerians expect that the President and leadership of the National Assembly\nwill show concrete commitment to improving the electoral process by an early\npassage of amendments to the Electoral Act. An early conclusion to reforms to\nthe electoral system and law will enable INEC begin the process of\nimplementation and improvement of election laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nigerians\nwill also be watching the National Assembly\u2019s resumption with bathed breath on\nwhat it does with the much criticised Social Media Bill and Hate Speech Bill.\nNo doubt, Civil Society groups and citizens will mobilise to confront the\nNational Assembly should it proceed to\nconsider the Bills. Additional key Bills that will come into focus include: the\nSenator Ovie Omo-Agege and Abu Kyari sponsored Electoral Offences Commission\nBill, the Senator Haliru Jika sponsored Police Bill and the Companies and\nAllied Matters Act (Amendment) Bill being sponsored by the Executive. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Nigerian National Assembly resumes this week after nearly five weeks break. Law makers had adjourned sitting last December in the euphoria of successful passage of the 2020 National Budget- the first time the budget would be passed ahead of its commencement year. As the National Assembly resumes sitting, expectations are high that it will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-1297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nass-resumes-with-focus-on-key-bills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1304,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions\/1304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}