The National Assembly Library Trust Fund plans to translate Nigerian laws into Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo and other indigenous languages as part of a wider effort to make legislation easier for citizens to find and understand.
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Its Executive Secretary, Henry Nwawuba, announced the plan in Abuja on Monday at the opening of the 2026 National Assembly Library Week. He also outlined work on electronic records, an upgraded E-Library, a mobile application and a Bills Tracker that would allow users to follow proposed laws through the legislative process. The three-day programme, which runs from September 28 to 30, is themed “Parliamentary Memory: Connecting Records, Legislation and the People.”
Nwawuba said the library was working to give lawmakers, legislative aides, researchers and the public better access to authoritative records, including Order Papers, Votes and Proceedings, committee reports, gazetted laws and Acts passed by the National Assembly. Describing the library’s broader purpose, he said: “Without institutional memory, each generation risks starting all over all the time.”
He said the proposed translations would help more Nigerians understand laws affecting their daily lives. The library is also developing infographics, audiovisual materials and video explainers to make Bills, Acts and legislative procedures easier to follow. Planned public policy dialogues would bring legislators, citizens and researchers into closer discussion and encourage participation in public hearings.
The access drive is also intended to address a problem raised repeatedly at the event: incomplete, altered, outdated or unauthorised copies of parliamentary documents circulating as official records. Nwawuba said reliable electronic repositories would help users locate authoritative versions of legislative material.
The Clerk to the National Assembly, Kamoru Ogunlana, said the legislature needed the ability to generate, preserve, retrieve and authenticate its records. He identified the Order Paper, Votes and Proceedings, and Hansard as essential parts of Nigeria’s parliamentary memory: they show what business was scheduled, what decisions were taken and what lawmakers said during debates.
Ogunlana warned that making a document available online was insufficient if users could not establish whether it was complete and legally authoritative. He said the integrity of an Act depended on identifying its authentic version and tracing the process through which it became law. He called for closer cooperation among the National Assembly, the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation, the Nigerian Law Reform Commission and the Federal Government Press to improve access to current federal laws.
He pointed to the continued use of the Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004 as an example of the difficulty of keeping a consolidated collection of laws current. That compilation, he explained, does not update itself whenever a new Act is enacted. As more parliamentary records move online, he urged stronger cybersecurity, secure authentication, access controls, backups, digital preservation and staff training to protect them against manipulation and impersonation of official sources.
Senate President Godswill Akpabio, represented by Senator Osita Ngwu, urged lawmakers to use the library more extensively, particularly as misinformation and artificial intelligence complicate the search for dependable information. House Speaker Tajudeen Abbas, represented by House Leader Prof. Julius Ihonvbere, said legislative records were vital to understanding Nigeria’s lawmaking history. He said technology and artificial intelligence could support research and preservation, provided accuracy, security and professional judgment guided their use.
The President of the Nigerian Library Association, Dr Lawal Umar, called for sustained investment in libraries and information technology, as well as stronger cooperation between the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly. The Conference of Speakers and Presidents of African Legislatures also highlighted opportunities for African parliaments to share expertise in preserving legislative records and improving access to them.
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