The management of the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC) has disclosed plans to introduce biometric into the two chambers of the National Assembly to effectively capture the attendance of Federal Lawmakers.
The electronic devices will replace the current manual register currently used by federal lawmakers in the National Assembly.
The Chairman, National Assembly Service Commission, Ahmad Khadi Amshi disclosed the plans to fully automate the attendance register of the lawmakers when he led other top management staff on an inspection tour of facilities at the National Assembly on Tuesday.
According to Amshi, Nigeria’s highest seat of power cannot remain stuck to manual registration in a digital age and lagging behind smaller African countries like Cape Verde and Zambia who he said have upgraded their National Assemblies with such electronic devices.
“The time has come when we have to embrace technology. At this time and age I think it is too archaic for our lawmakers to sign and register manually”. We have gone round to many Assemblies around the world and we know what they are doing. Their registers are automated, digitalized”.
Ahmad Khadi Amshi
Nigerian federal lawmakers are required by law to be in attendance for plenary and other legislative duties for a minimum of 180 legislative days.
To keep the records, the federal lawmakers are required to write and sign on the attendance sheet at the entrance of the chamber.
The NASC Chairman said the current manual register is not good enough to effectively capture the daily attendance of lawmakers.
Reacting, the Clerk to the Senate, Ibrahim El- Ladan welcomed the proposal; pointing out that the plan was already being considered by the National Assembly to upgrade the system.
The Chairman and his team were received by the Clerk to the National Assembly, Ojo Olatunde Amos.
Apart from the two chambers, the team inspected facilities at the National Assembly ICT Centre; as well as the State of facilities in the library and the National Assembly Television studios (NASSTV).
