The President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, said on Monday that the 10th Senate will “highly support” the Bill seeking to create special seats for women in the Nigerian Parliament.
Akpabio made the remarks while playing host to a delegation of the UK branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association(CPA) which visited him in his office.
The proposed legislation was one of the gender related bills that failed to scale through during the Constitution Review process in the 9th National Assembly but which has now been reintroduced in the current Assembly by the House of Representatives.
The delegation which was led by Kate Ofunne Osamor had requested to hear from the Senate President to know what support the Senate was giving to the proposed legislation for special seats for women in the Nigerian Parliament.
“We want to assure you that the Bill that you are referring to will be highly supported by us,” Akpabio told his guests before the meeting went into a closed session.
Speaking further, theSenate President expressed the hope that the visit by the CPA UK delegation would be productive and result in “a strong bond of relationship, to be able to have Parliamentary diplomatic shuttle and exchange of visits and at the same time exchange of ideas on how to make the world a better place.”
“At the end of this visit, we would have formed a strong CPA UK Parliamentary/Nigeria Cooperation that will outlive us and continue to bring about good governance and freedom of speech and freedom of Association, improving trade and also improving the living standard and of people in our various country,” Akpabio said.
Earlier, Kate Ofunne Osamor who led the delegation said the visit was to build support for the passage of special seats bill for women in the Nigerian Parliament.
“We really like to hear from you and know what you are doing to support this bill, to ensure it does happen but I want you to also recognise that this is a cross-party delegation.
“So we have come as cross-party members from the House of Common and also from the House of Lords, which is similar to the Senate.
“We really want to learn from you and exchange ideas and start a very good conversation. If this bill is able to get over the line, we can start to look at other things on how we can work together,” Osamor said.
