The Erudite Growth and Advancement Foundation (ERGAF-AFRICA), in partnership with the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), on Tuesday convened in Abuja to advance a new phase of legislative governance accountability in Nigeria.
A statement by Chioma Lucky, Communications Officer at ERGAF-AFRICA, on behalf of the stakeholders, emphasized the urgency of institutional reform.
“This initiative is a crucial step toward ensuring our political representatives are truly serving the interests of the people.
“By using data-driven insights from the NASS Barometer, we can move from mere advocacy to concrete action for a more responsive legislature,” she stated.
The event, organized under the auspices of the Coalition for Legislative Governance Accountability in Nigeria (COLGAN), with strategic support from Christian Aid (CA), seeks to scale up the ERGAF-AFRICA NASS Deliberative Barometer Productivity Index Report, an evidence-based accountability instrument designed to systematically track, measure, and evaluate the plenary productivity of Nigeria’s 469 federal lawmakers across key sectors using multivariate legislative instruments as indicators.
According to her, “At a time when Nigeria faces mounting socio-economic pressures, declining public trust in democratic institutions, and an observable erosion in the quality and frequency of legislative debates, this initiative places the National Assembly under rigorous empirical scrutiny.”
She further noted that leading governance accountability institutions, including CISLAC, Christian Aid, ActionAid, FCDO, Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC), Policy Alert, Connected Development (CODE), Legis 360, CJID, ICIR, CLEEN Foundation, OrderPaper, KAS Foundation, Ford Foundation, YIAGA Africa, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), BudgIT, and Centre LSD, among others are aligning around a shared commitment to entrench legislative governance accountability as a non-negotiable democratic standard.
The ERGAF-AFRICA Legislative Governance Innovation and Policy Hub pioneered the NASS Barometer as a data-driven solution to reverse the worrying decline in legislative deliberations and to warehouse credible, sector-based productivity data on parliamentary performance.
The Barometer moves governance accountability from rhetoric to measurable outcomes. By deploying core parliamentary instruments as benchmarks, motions, bills, debates, committee reports, and oversight engagements the Index provides citizens, reform advocates, and development partners with a transparent lens into the workings of the legislature.
At the event, civil society leaders, governance reform advocates, and development partners formalized a collaborative framework for sustained engagement.
Stakeholders are expected to endorse and sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) establishing a coordinated pathway for leveraging the NASS Barometer insights to drive policy reform advocacy, strengthen citizen participation in the policy process, and elevate standards of legislative productivity nationwide.
“The ERGAF-AFRICA NASS Deliberative Barometer Index Report is not merely a publication; it is a civic instrument of democratic correction.
“It empowers citizens with credible data for informed voting decisions, equips advocacy groups with empirical evidence for reform campaigns, and challenges legislators to meet the constitutional expectations of representation, lawmaking, and oversight.”
