Africa Must Design Own Development Model – NILDS DG

The director general of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), Abuja, Prof. Abubakar Sulaiman has advocated an Afrocentric model as against the Afro-Eurocentric approach to the development of Africa.

Sulaiman said this at the closing ceremony of a 5-day training workshop for opposition members and members of the Budget Committee of the Parliament of Uganda, held at the NILDS permanent site in Abuja.

He said efforts must be geared towards building Africa by Africans using the instrumentality of legislative instruments to advance intra and inter democratic cultures, knowledge, ethics, and skills as tools for advancement.

Sulaiman, who noted that Nigeria is a big democratic nation with 25 years of unbroken democracy running a bi-cameral legislature  compared to Uganda with a unicameral parliamentary system, pointed out that both countries have a lot to share and to learn from each other.

While congratulating the trainees for the successful completion of the capacity building training for the 4th consecutive time, Sulaiman  said the knowledge garnered should be deployed to interrogate, allocation and implementation of budgets, its impacts on the lives of Ugandans, oversight functions and constructive opposition towards taking the country to a higher pedestals.

In a separate postmortem review of the 5-day capacity building, the deputy chairman of the Committee of the Parliament of Uganda, Hon. Remigio Achia and the leader of opposition, Joel Ssenyonyi, said they had beneficial engagements and highly rewarding cross- pollination of knowledge and skills  that will be useful to their country.