NILDS wins ‘best digital MDA’ award, moves to improve Nigeria’s laws with book on legislative drafting

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The National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies, NILDS, an agency under the National Assembly, has emerged the ‘Best Federal MDA in Digital Engagement’ at the 2024 NigGovTech, Public Service Conference and Awards in Abuja.

The NigGovTech, Public Service Conference and Awards is organized by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, BPSR.

The Director General, NILDS, Professor Abubakar Olanrewaju Sulaiman, also bagged the ‘Distinguished GovTech Trailblazer Award’ at the event.

The 2024 NigGovTech, Public Service Conference which had as its theme, ‘Digital Innovation as a Catalyst for the Renewed Hope Agenda’, was attended by representatives of different Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, of the Federal Government.

NILDS Director General, Sulaiman, represented by the Director of Studies in the institute, Dr. Asimiyu Abiola, was presented with the awards by the Deputy Governor of Niger State, Mallam Yakubu Garba, one of the guests invited to present awards to winners at the event.

The organiser, BPSR, explained that NILDS, which is statutorily empowered to carry out capacity building for the federal legislature and parliamentarians at sub-national levels, bagged the awards in recognition of the director general’s contributions to the national efforts towards total attainment of digitalisation of the public sector.

The Bureau of Public Service Reforms noted that NILDS Paperless Operational Performance remains a catalyst for improved service delivery in the system, which is deserving of the awards.

The NILDS director general, who had received ‘Integrity and Public Servant of the Year’ award in 2023, was commended for “sustaining the momentum in digitalisation in the public enterprise towards maintaining a pride of place for the country among the comity of fully digitalized nations”.

The representative of the NILDS director general was supported to receive the awards by the Acting Head of ICT Unit, Ali Abdullahi and the Media Adviser to the DG, Mohammad Abdulkadri.

Meanwhile, NILDS has moved to improve the quality of Nigeria’s laws with the unveiling of a ‘groundbreaking’ book on comparative legislative drafting. The book is written by a leading lawyer in the field of legislative drafting, Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja, a senior staff NILDS and a legislative drafting lawyer for the National Assembly.

The book titled, ‘An Introduction to Comparative Legislative Drafting (Cases and Materials)’, a collection of essays in honour of Director General of NILDS, Sulaiman, is due to be unveiled on 15th October 2024, at the Open Arena, Permanent Site of the NILDS, Piwoyi, Airport Road, Lugbe, Abuja.

The book was described as groundbreaking because it is the first to use six criteria, namely nomenclature, drafting personnel, structure of legislation, legislation for drafting, supporting documents and publication of legislation to compare and contrast the different legal/legislative drafting systems of the world.

“The major jurisdictions and legal systems that are examined include: the common law legal system as exemplified by the United Kingdom; the civil law legal tradition as exemplified by France; the Islamic law system as exemplified by Saudi Arabia and the legislative drafting systems of the African Union (AU), United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU).

“The benefits of such comparative study of legislative drafting systems and models of legislation is presented within the book.”

According to NILDS, the book would be useful to legal scholars and legislators and jurists whose work involves analysis of legislation.

The institute added, “The last time a similar book was published was in the year 1977 by the late Sir William Dale of the United Kingdom who authored a book entitled: ‘Legislative Drafting: A Comparative Study of Methods of France, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Sweden’.

“Unlike Sir William Dale’s book, Dr. Jaja’s book covers more jurisdictions and uses a criteria that includes six verifiable parameters as basis or tool for the comparative study.”

NILDS wins ‘best digital MDA’ award, moves to improve Nigeria’s laws with book on legislative drafting

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