Senator Bukola Saraki’s Speech at the 11th Annual Business Law Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association

    Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki Addressing constituents at #AskSaraki Town Hall

SPEECH DELIVERED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, HIS EXCELLENCY SENATOR ABUBAKAR BUKOLA SARAKI (CON), AT THE 11TH ANNUAL BUSINESS LAW CONFERENCE OF THE NIGERIAN BAR ASSOCIATION- SECTION ON BUSINESS LAW

PROTOCOLS

1. It is a great pleasure to be in your midst today. I’d like to take a moment to thank the organizers and also express my sincere gratitude for the invitation extended to me to be with you here today to speak on this very vital theme “Law and the Changing Face of Legal Practice”.

2. When I was invited by the NBA in 2015, I made the issue of the economy the central theme of my conversation with you. Today, once again, I come back with the same message. I remember calling on the NBA to come join hands with us the legislature into a new partnership to make the Nigerian economy great again. I am glad you heed to the call. Again, this is important because in our view a surviving democracy must be built around citizen’ participation, broad stakeholder engagement, deliberation and transparency.

3. The Nigerian Bar Association remains not just a stakeholder but one of the most critical voice of reason within our body polity. This is why we at the Senate have continued to seek out and engage you for advice and consultations on national issues. The role the NBA plays in shaping public perception and the opportunity it offers as a vehicle for promoting good governance have continued to grow. This is why when we opened up consultations and engagement with the private sector and the wider civil society on our legislative agenda which has been anchored on the economy, the NBA was one of our first port of call.

4. I remember the promise I made to you then in 2015 shortly after we took office, where I pledged that we will run a much more transparent National Assembly ready to protect our common wealth through effective lawmaking, oversight and representation. I called the NBA to partnership in our lawmaking role. I charged the NBA to come up with ideas on laws that would help us reform the economy and deepen our democracy. today, in partial fulfilment of that promise and the desire to deepen the democratic ethos of the National Assembly the 8th National Assembly is breaking down barriers to engagement and public scrutiny.

5. We have as a matter of deliberate policy put the daily plenary on the worldwide web for all to see and gain first-hand knowledge about the inner workings of the Assembly. We have for the first time in the history of the National Assembly uploaded our line by line budget to the public, subjecting our finances to greater openness. As part of this Open Nass initiative, the 8th National Assembly is today the first National Assembly to hold a joint public hearing on the budget as part of the budget approval process. Also, we are the first Assembly to deliberate and consider the full detail of the budget on the floor before passage. We are without a doubt the most civil society engaging National Assembly in the history of the consideration and approval of the federal budget. All of these we have embarked on to further strengthen and encourage the continuous interaction and mobilisation of our people towards building a more virile people’s parliament.

6. We have continued to expand and push the bar of engagement ever farther. Today, the NBA-SBL and other private sector groups and the civil society are participating in the law-making process as we work through our economic priority bills by providing and engaging with relevant committees on technical advisory and support. This is another area where we have found very robust engagement and involvement with our private citizens. Aside the added advantage of enhancing the quality of the bills we pass, I am a firm believer that the laws coming out of the parliament must be owned by the people for it to have the value to change lives. Because law is a tool for social and economic re-engineering. Let me therefore use this opportunity to thank all of you in the NBA-SBL and the wider civil society that have so far participated in this process and offered us their expertise. The National Assembly is grateful for all your effort at ensuring that we build a new Nigerian economy. I hope that our timeous passage of the bills you have been involved with has encouraged you that we mean business and we are dedicated for more. For those who have not keyed into this lofty initiative, we extend our invitation.

7. The National Assembly is leading a new role to use legislative intervention as a mechanism for achieving economic reform. While the National Assembly has pursued economic reforms in the past, much of it had not been anchored on a solid legislative reform of the obsolete laws that guide economic exchanges. This has been the missing gap to sustaining meaningfully the economic policies of the past including the vision 2010, 20- 2020.

8. The current 8th National Assembly has placed premium on creating the right legal framework for empowering entrepreneurial development, building investor confidence on our economy and renewing our infrastructure base across board. On infrastructure alone, experts, including the minister of Budget and Planning that Nigeria will need about $3.05 trillion in the next 30 years in order to implement the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan, NIIMP. With the state of the revenue basket, it is clear that unless we are able to expand the financing base to incorporate other sources of funding and mobilisation we may not be able to meet our infrastructure target and reduce our deficit. Otherwise, health, education, water sanitation, security and other essential public services will continue to suffer.