More women and Persons with Disabilities could soon have dedicated seats in Nigeria’s federal and state legislatures, following plans by President Bola Tinubu to transmit executive bills to the National Assembly.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, disclosed this on Thursday in Abuja, saying the proposed legislation would create additional seats for the two groups without replacing existing elective seats.
Abbas said the bill on reserved seats for women has been forwarded to the Ministry of Justice for fine-tuning, while the executive bill for Persons with Disabilities is expected within the next few weeks.
He spoke at a reception organised by the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations in honour of the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, Professor Justin Green.
The Speaker said the initiative forms part of efforts by the 10th National Assembly to promote greater representation in governance.
Under the proposed women’s reserved-seat arrangement, additional seats would be created in the National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly, separate from the existing constituencies.
A separate proposal, already before the House, also seeks special representation for Persons with Disabilities at the federal, state and local government legislative levels.
