By Ifeanyi Nwoko
The National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS) has said that policy drafters have a critical role to ensure there are less ambiguities in policies.
Speaking at the end of a 4-day training for Parliamentary drafters Director General of NILS Prof. Ladi Hamalai said that drafters must equip themselves with the right tools and knowledge for drafting.
She noted that deep understanding of the techniques of drafting legislations has helped reduce disagreements between executives and Legislature in many countries.
The training with the theme: Translating Policy into Legislation: Techniques for Drafting Legislative Bills, was designed to cater for the interest of target participants, in recognition of differences of parliaments across the West Africa sub-region.
Speaking at the training, Prof. Hamalai said that most disagreements by the executive and legislature in many countries are usually caused by ambiguous clauses in policy documents and laws.
She said that one significant objective of the training was to equip participants with the techniques for drafting legislative Bills, thus, sharpening the skills for legislative drafting.
She said that with the training, she was confident that the participants will eliminate all forms of ambiguities from their drafts.
Hamalai noted that, through such regional coalition within the three existing blocs of Anglophone, francophone and lusophone, the legislature would be better equipped to serve the citizens.
Presenting a paper at the workshop, the Dean, Faculty of Law University of Jos, Prof. Dakas Dakas (SAN), said the workshop was coming at a critical time that there appears to be a looming constitutional crisis between the Senate and the Executive arm of government, over the nomination and non-confirmation of the Chairman of the EFCC.
He said that such workshops would help provide good understanding of the technique of translating policy into legislation and how policy can be mainstreamed into legislation, with clear understanding of the provisions of the law.
He urged the participants, as drafters to ensure that the law at all times, is consistent with the constitution as this would help avoid any ambiguity and constitutional crisis between the two arms of government.
A total of 60 parliamentary drafters participated in the training which is the 4th in the series training programmes for parliamentary staff under the Extension of NILS-CAP 1, with financial support from the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF).
