The National Assembly is set to advance its digital archives by translating Nigerian laws into Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and other local languages to improve public access to legislative materials.
Henry Nwawuba, Executive Secretary of the National Assembly Library Trust Fund, announced the initiative on Monday in Abuja while opening the 2026 National Assembly Library Week.
Themed “Parliamentary Memory: Connecting Records, Legislation and the People,” the three-day event serves as an annual platform to enhance legislative research, broaden information access, and maximize the library’s resources.
Nwawuba emphasized that the facility operates as the vital knowledge engine of the legislature and a critical safeguard of parliamentary records.
He added that ongoing efforts will guarantee seamless access for lawmakers, aides, researchers, and the public to authoritative records—including Order Papers, Votes and Proceedings, committee reports, and passed legislation.
Nwawuba said the Trust Fund was investing in electronic repositories and upgrading of its E-Library, while developing a National Assembly Library mobile application to make legislative information more accessible to lawmakers, staff members, researchers and members of the public.
He also announced plans for a Bills Tracker, which would enable users to follow bills and monitor their progress through the legislative process.
According to him, the library is developing infographics, audiovisual materials and video explainers to simplify Bills, Acts and legislative procedures for Nigerians.
He said the planned translation of laws into local languages would broaden access to legislative information and enable more citizens to understand laws that affect their daily lives.
Nwawuba said the library would also organise public policy dialogues to deepen citizens’ participation in public hearings and create more opportunities for interaction among legislators, citizens, researchers and other stakeholders.
He added that the initiatives were aimed at addressing inconsistencies in official parliamentary documents and the circulation of fake or unauthorised copies of National Assembly records.
In a message to the occasion, Senate President Godswill Akpabio urged lawmakers to make greater use of the library, particularly in an era of increasing misinformation, disinformation and the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
Represented by Sen. Osita Ngwu,
Akpabio described the library as a critical link between evidence, knowledge and legislative decision-making and called for continued support for its development.
On his part, House of Representatives Speaker Abbas Tajudeen, represented by the House Leader, Prof. Julius Ihonvbere, said legislative records were essential to understanding Nigeria’s legislative history and strengthening democratic governance.
Tajudeen said the strength of a legislature should be measured not only by the laws it enacted, but also on how effectively it documented its activities, preserved institutional knowledge and made such information available to future generations.
He said technology and artificial intelligence could improve legislative research, records preservation and access to information, but cautioned that their adoption must be guided by accuracy, security, professional judgment.
The Clerk to the National Assembly, Kamoru Ogunlana, said the National Assembly could not be truly independent if it lacked the capacity to generate, preserve, retrieve and authenticate its institutional knowledge and records.
Ogunlana said the library had an important role as a bridge between parliamentary records, legislation and the people, stressing that Parliament could not be fully transparent if its records could not be found, understood and trusted.
He identified the Order Paper, Votes and Proceedings and Hansard as key components of Nigeria’s democratic memory, explaining that the Order Paper provides the agenda for legislative business.
The Clerk warned against the circulation of incomplete, outdated, altered or unauthorised Bills, Acts and other parliamentary documents, saying digital technology had made it possible for documents to be manipulated and circulated.
He stressed that the integrity of an Act depended not merely on the existence of a document, but on the ability to establish which version was authentic, which was authoritative and the legal process through which it emerged.
He noted that the continued widespread use of the Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, LFN 2004, highlighted the challenges of maintaining a current and authoritative consolidated body of federal legislation.
He explained that the LFN 2004 reflected the laws covered by that revision exercise and was not automatically updated whenever a new Act was enacted.
Ogunlana said the National Assembly must also strengthen cybersecurity, digital preservation, secure authentication, access controls, backup systems and staff members’ training as parliamentary records become increasingly digitised.
He warned that while digitization streamlines access, searchability, and dissemination, it also exposes legislative records to risks like cyberattacks, data manipulation, and official impersonation.
To address these vulnerabilities, the Clerk emphasized that digital platforms must maintain high accessibility without compromising security, ensuring electronic records remain authentic, traceable, and readily available.
He added that the National Assembly Library must transition from a passive document repository into an active hub that preserves, authenticates, and distributes parliamentary knowledge to lawmakers, researchers, journalists, civil society organizations, students, and the general public.
In support, Dr. Lawal Umar, President of the Nigerian Library Association, advocated for sustained investment in library infrastructure and modern information tech to broaden access to legislative resources.
He also urged closer collaboration between the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly.
Aligning with the call for institutional memory, Amb. Debo Oyewale, Secretary-General of the Conference of Speakers of African Legislatures, noted that African legislative bodies have a significant opportunity to learn from one another in safeguarding their historical records.