The National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), has commenced process of raising thoroughly trained legislative Drafters for National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly.
Forty of such set of legislative drafters were certificated Friday in Abuja by NILDS after three months intensive training.
In his speech at the ceremony, the Director General of NILDS, Professor Abubakar Sulaiman, said the main purpose of coming up with the idea, was to equip both the National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly with highly competent and professionally trained legislative drafters.
This according to him, will go a long way in adding value to legislative drafting devoid of errors in any way, particularly the appropriate words and sentences to use in any piece of legislations, conceived, considered, passed and assented to into law.
“As an Institute set up for legislative research and carrying out of capacity building workshops and trainings for both legislators and parliamentary staff, legislative drafting is being focused upon through this internship trainings which has been broken into three batches.
“The first batch are the 40 interns graduating today after three months of thorough training and mentorship on Legislative Drafting.
“The next batch will commence similar internship training in May this year many of whom will be recommended to the National and State Houses of Assembly as competent, diligent and professional legislative Drafters.
“In enriching legislative drafting at both the National and States Houses of Assembly, all the people selected for the internship training are graduates already equipped with elevated languages in parliamentary context,” he said.
In what looks like an automatic empoyment, the DG NILDS, declared that the best graduating intern, Barrister Abdullahi Ahmad Usman, will be retained to join the team of trainers for other prospective legislative drafters.
The Director, Legislative Support Services in the Institute, Professor Edoba Omorege (SAN), leads the pack of eminent lawyers and legislative drafters, training the interns.
