Investigation of Performance of Parliamentary Staff Support Services to the National Assembly

Abstract

The study investigated the performance of the support services by parliamentary administra-tors. It identified the roles of parliamentary staff support in the National Assembly; examined the extent of the performance of parliamentary staff support services in the National Assem-bly as well as the factors militating against the performance of parliamentary staff support services. The study adopted the mixed research design using the questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. The proportionate stratified sampling technique was used to select the re-spondents that provided primary data, while secondary data was taken from published mate-rials. The qualitative method was employed in the analysis of data. Findings showed that there is a consensus on the importance of parliamentary staff support services in the National Assembly. Hence, the services of Senior Legislative Aides, Legal Aides, Principal Secretaries to Legislators, Committee Clerks, and Administrative Staff were noted for the effectiveness of the National Assembly. However, the study noted the chal-lenges militating against the effectiveness of parliamentary staff support services in the Na-tional Assembly to include; inadequate training (48.8%), lack of cooperation with Interna-tional Parliamentary Organizations (6.0%), inadequate resources (44.8%), lack of information and communication (4.4%), among others. The study concluded that the performance of parliamentary staff support services in the National Assembly is crucial for it to perform its traditional roles satisfactorily – that is being functional, accountable, informed, independent as well as representative, as well as required for facilitating the lawmaking process.