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The Director General of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies, NILDS, Prof. Abubakar O. Sulaiman has posited that the Legislative arm can only measure up to serve as counter weight to the executive with targeted capacity building training.
He said this in Owerri, Imo State during a workshop organized for Legislative Aides of State Houses of Assembly, organized by the Institute in partnership with KAS Foundation.

"Even at the National level, the Legislative Bureaucracy is fairly underdeveloped; having existed for only about twenty continuous years; unlike their counterpart in the executive, the Legislature suffers a chronic lack of adequate trained personnel, needed to provide technical and administrative support. The Legislature is expected to play an important role of being an equal arm of government , charged with the important responsibility of serving as a counterweight to the executive", Prof. Sulaiman said.

He further informed that due to high turnover and by implication, new Legislative Aides further underscores the need for regular capacity building.

"All categories of staff and Legislative Aides in core areas of legislative which is even more vital during the high turnover rate of Legislature, which in turn means that a substantial number of legislative aides will also be new and thus inexperienced in main aspects of legislative practice and procedure", he opined.

The two day training program is one of the series of capacity programs in 2021 by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies.