Director General of the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), Abubakar Suleiman, said about 130 lawmakers in the Federal House of Representatives will not make it to the 10th National Assembly.
He said the number may rise because the 130 legislators are those who lost in the primary elections of their various parties.
Suleiman made this pronouncement on Monday during the presentation of a paper, themed “High Turnover of Lawmakers: Negative Impact and Way Forward,” at the House of Representatives Press Corps Week.
The 10th National Assembly will be inaugurated in June. It has 360 seats occupied by lawmakers from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The former minister of National Planning noted that 215 new members joined the House in 2019 and that chances are high that more new members will join the next House.
He said the high trend has affected the legislative arms in various manners, especially in the area of continuity of legislation.
“Already, there is a clear indication that the incoming 10th National Assembly might be worse than the previous ones. When the 9th Assembly was inaugurated, there were about 215 new members, against a little over 130 old members which cut across all the political parties.
“Among them, the All Progressives Congress (APC) had the highest number of new lawmakers (137), while the PDP was next, with 59 members.
“With over 130 members of the House already out of the contest without nomination to contest, there are fears that the number of lawmakers that will return may further deplete. This indicates that the number of fresh lawmakers in the incoming 10th Assembly in 2023 may be higher than the last Assembly. It is against this background that the trend of legislative turnover is further analysed,” he said.
