Welcome to the website of the National Assembly. Here, the world is red and grey. But I cannot promise you that the page is very colourful – at least, not as colourful and flamboyant as what the ‘honorable’ lawmakers regularly wear.
Besides, the site is poorly updated. For instance, as of Monday night, there is no information on the results of the just-concluded election. However, it is not a bad place for people looking for resource materials. For one, it documents the bills passed in the last few years.
From 2011 till date, the National Assembly has passed a total number of 37 bills, reveals its website.
With a few of them passed before the inauguration of the outgoing administration, it implies that fewer than 37 bills were successfully passed by the seventh Assembly.
Some of the bills passed by both chambers – the Senate and the House of Representatives – according to the website, are the Appropriation Bill (2014), the Pension Reform Act (2014), the National Assembly Service Commission Act (2014), the National Assembly Service Act (2014), the Transfer of Convicted Offenders Amendment Act (2013), the Terrorism Prevention Amendment Act (2013), the Appropriation Act (2013) and the Appropriation Amendment Act (2013).
Others are the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (2013), the Court of Appeal Amendment Act (2013), the Federal Capital Territory Appropriation Act (2013), the Hydro-Electric Power Producing Areas Development Commission Amendment Act (2013), the Money Laundering Prohibition Amendment Act (2012), the Niger Delta Development Commission Appropriation Act (2012), the Appropriation Act (2012) and the Federal Capital Territory Act (2012).
There are also the Supplementary Appropriation Act (2012), the Universities Miscellaneous Provisions Amendment Act (2012), the Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act (2011), the Industrial Training Fund Amendment Act (2011) and others.
As of Monday, the website operator had yet to update the site to include the 2014 appropriation among the documents the outgoing House of Representatives has successfully treated.
The lower chamber had, on Thursday, passed the 2015 budget.
Besides the budget, which is still awaiting the Senate’s endorsement, no other bill has been successfully treated and passed by the Assembly this year.
And apart from those made by the current Assembly, the website lists additional 182 acts passed by the previous legislative sessions, making its archive a relatively robust resource centre.
Comparatively, the lawmakers are leaving behind hundreds of unfinished bills. According to the site, the Senate will hand over 370 bills to the next session, with some spending over a decade in its files.
The recent bills that have yet to be trashed or passed are the Central Bank of Nigeria Amendment Bill (2014), the Charted of Public Administration of Nigeria Bill (2014), the Nigerian Council of Food Science and Technology Bill (2014), the Counselling Practitioners Council of Nigeria Bill (2014), the Defence Corporation of the Nigeria Act Amendment Bill (2014) and the Nigerian Electricity Management Authority Bill (2014).
Also, the House of Representatives is sitting on 607 bills, including the Nigerian Career Advice for School Children Bill (2014), the Nigerian Metallurgical Industry Bill (2014), the Non-Governmental Organisations Regulatory Agency of Nigeria Bill (2014), the Family Support Trust Fund Act Amendment Bill and the Nigerian Development Bank Act Amendment Bill.
The Assembly’s site lists public petitions as essential legislative documents of the National Assembly. Checks by our correspondent show that only five of such documents have been documented on the site under the current administration.
The Assembly opened with a petition by one Martin Nwabuwa, seeking the intervention of the House of Representatives in his retirement, which he considered unlawful, at John Holt Nigeria and the payment of his benefits. According to the site, the petition, filed on February 7, 2012, was referred to the Committee on Public Petitions. Three years after, those who visit the section are left with questions on the outcome of the plea.
The other four petitions, sponsored by different members of the House of Representatives on behalf of the petitioners, end with remarks similar to that of Nwabuwa. Nothing is said about the current status.
Yet, the complete documents are not accessible even though they, supposedly, have been uploaded on the site.
This appears to be a major challenge affecting the online resources of the Assembly. The documents are not downloadable.

www.punchng.com/i-punch/a-visit-to-national-assemblys-website/