Why we shift  ECOWAS parliament meeting in Kano, Barau Jibrin 

the  grassroots,to truly feel the impact of the herculean task ahead of them.

The ECOWAS Parliament which is also known as Community Parliament, is one of the Institutions of ECOWAS it is the Assembly of the People of the Community, serving as a forum for Dialogue, Consultation and Consensus for Representatives of the People of West Africa, with the aim of promoting integration, says the First Deputy Speaker, Senator Barau Jibrin.

However,Senator Barau Jibrin who doubles as the Deputy Senate President,made the assertion on Monday ,while speaking with press,shortly after the opening of the Technical Session of the ECOWAS Parliament meeting at the Bristol Hotel, Kano, saidthat the Members of the Parliament needs to know the People they are serving at the Grassroots with the Citizens also vice versa knowing them.

According to him,”Kano is the centre of Commerce of the entire northern Nigeria. It is the political capital if you like political nerve centre in the entire northern Nigeria.

So that’s why we brought this session to hold here so that we bring ECOWAS closer to the people so that people will know ECOWAS parliaments and ECOWAS parliaments will go deeper into our various societies.

According to him,” 115 Members States are supposed to be attending the Regional Legislative sitting in Kano, however 3 members of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso are not attending due to some reasons.”

Senator Barau disclosed that each member State should have a guaranteed of minimum of 5 seats while the remaining 40 seats would be shared on the basis of population with Nigeria having the highest share due to it population strength.

He added that ” Tomorrow, Tuesday, is going to be the session that will implored all the parliamentarians and of course the invited guest that will be here with us tomorrow, and what we had today is the Bureau meeting – between the leadership of the Parliament and the committee chairmen and other principal officers of the parliament.”

Tomorrow will be a session for all the parliamentarians and VIPs are going to be invited to witness the session and it’s going to be a general meeting.

He then gave reasons why Representatives from Togo are not attending the meeting, because there were no elections in that country but now election has taken place and we are expecting them to be around within the period we are going to have this event and they will hopefully be sworn in on Thursday.”

He however disclosed that  “in this meeting the entire assembly has been brought here and in the assembly we don’t have any kind of restrictions. when we have a parliament, everything concerning the entire community will be discussed.”

“When you have a parliament even if you have an agenda, you still have a room for everybody to bring forward whatever he feels that we feel should be discussed.
So it’s an open session for parliament and they don’t have restrictions.

Everything about the society, about the economy, about ECOWAS, about the west African sub region can be discussed. So, it’s an open ended kind of a scope in respect of what is going to be discussed”, the First Deputy Speaker noted.

He insisted that it’s the first time that you have this kind of meetings and sessions of ECOWAS parliaments taking place in Kano. It’s in line with what we’ve said, we are here so that Kano will know ECOWAS parliaments and ECOWAS parliaments will know Kano.

”