A lead Law and Policy advisor, Dr. Oracle Nwala, has underscored the need to enhance mutual collaboration between the Legislature and Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in the bid to tackle insecurity ravaging the country.
Nwala gave the charge in a chat with Parliamentary Correspondents after the retreat organized by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a German Foundation for National Assembly’s management and senior staff saddled with mandates on Defence and Security.
In the bid to achieve this, he stressed the need to institutionalise structured collaborative forums, regular interface, efficient information-sharing frameworks, as well as creating dedicated spaces for open communication that guarantees informed decision-making.
This, according to him, will help to ensure that legislative agenda syncs seamlessly with security policy objectives and strategies.
Nwala said: “It’s been back to back training and retreat with Management and Senior Staff of National Assembly with mandate on Defence and Security organized by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a German Foundation in collaboration with the National Assembly.
“We took the liberty to reflect at the trio dimensional moments of our security situation from the prism of Legislature-Executive interface and interactions.
“We equally examined the spanners that clog the wheels to seamless legislative processes including particularly, collaborations between the Clerks of Committees and the Technical Staff and of course, the MDAs with mandate on Defence and Security
“My key position is that effective collaboration between the Clerks of Committees and the Technical Staff in the National Assembly on one hand and the MDAs is imperative to propel effective security frameworks and strategy.
“This partnership is akin to silent force that can transform routine procedures into exceptional outcomes, underscoring the vital role of stakeholder’s engagement and participation in ensuring the nation’s security resilience and the cohesive synergy within security functionality.
“The relationship between the Legislature and the Executive, for all intents and purposes, is not designed to be unified even though complimentary.
“The primary function of the Legislature is lawmaking while that of the Executive is policy making (even though our primary knowledge of government says the executive is to execute laws).
“This therefore, has implications for organic conflict mode.”
According to him, the “problem always is that policy frameworks, no matter how well couched cannot, by any stretch of imagination, supplant the law. The best a policy can do is to complement the law and that is the only way it can seamlessly be implemented for the purpose of getting things done.
“The key recommendation from my presentations lean on the dire need to enhance mutual collaboration between the National Assembly and MDAs by institutionalising structured collaborative forums, regular interface, efficient information-sharing frameworks, as well as creating dedicated spaces for open communication that guarantees informed decision-making.
“This will help to ensure that the Legislative agenda syncs seamlessly with security policy objectives and strategies.
“It is also my conviction that these steps will not in any way jeopardize or compromise the oversight functions of the Legislature,” Nwala noted.
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