Deputy Senate
President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, has asked African governments to make
Bachelors Degree the least required educational qualification for legislators
in the continent, saying such was necessary given the challenges of the 21st
Century African societies.
Senator Ekweremadu,
who decried the harsh effect of long years of military rule on the development
of African legislatures, insisted that the challenges of legislating for 21st
Century African societies had made possession of higher educational
qualifications imperative for parliamentarians in the continent.
In a statement
Wednesday, in Abuja, by his Special Adviser, Media, Uche Anichukwu, Senator
Ekweremadu stated this in Mahe, the Republic of Seychelles, where he is
attending the 14th Conference of Commonwealth Speakers and Presiding Officers
of African Region.
The statement quoted
the Deputy Senate President as saying: “The theatre of politics at the domestic
and international levels is changing drastically.”
According to
Eweremadu, the development had: “Thrown up many complicated issues like
terrorism, piracy, climate change and global warming, child trafficking, global
economic recession, trade imbalances between the North and South, cyber-crimes,
among others, which require some form of intellectual sophistication to deal
with.
“Accordingly, African
Parliaments must set higher standards of education for their membership in
order to adequately respond to these challenges; it is only logical to
prescribe an Ordinary National Diploma or Associate Degree as minimum
qualification for membership of individual African Parliaments to enhance the
quality of debate and the product of parliamentary businesses,” he added.
Senator Ekweremadu,
however, commended many African parliaments for the impressive pedigree of
their members, despite what he called the “absence of minimum qualifications or
prescription of low qualifications in their laws.”
He noted that though
the Nigerian law provides for a minimum of Senior School Certificate or its
equivalent, research during Nigeria’s Sixth National Assembly showed that 96.33
percent of 109 Senators and 92 percent of the 360 Members of the House of
Representatives possessed educational qualifications higher than the minimum
requirements.
Senator Ekweremadu
also disclosed that the entire members of Ghanaian Parliament within the same
period possessed a minimum of Bachelor’s Degree
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