Nigeria clinches two positions in CoSPAL leadership as President Tinubu’s CoS, SAA get elected

By Christiana Ekpa

Chief of Staff to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila has been elected as a member of the Advisory Committee of the Conference of Speakers and Presidents of African Legislatures (CoSPAL).
Similarly, the Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on International Cooperation, Dapo Oyewole has also been elected as the Secretary-General of the body.
This is as the Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana, Rt. Hon. Alban Kingsford Bagbin was also returned as the chairman of the top legislators’ forum.
Their elections took place on Saturday at the 2nd General Assembly meeting of the Conference of Speakers and Presidents of African Legislatures (CoSPAL) Accra, Ghana.
The event brought together over 100 participants including 15 Speakers and Presidents of National Legislatures, 30 Deputy Speakers and Presidents, Clerks/Secretary Generals and supporting staff of Parliaments and National Assemblies across Africa.
COSPAL as a body of all Speakers and Presidents of Parliament across the 54 African countries was established in 2020 to facilitate increased deliberation, collaboration, and cooperation between Speakers and Presidents of Parliaments and National Assemblies on the continent to help them address common challenges, devise joint strategies, and mobilise collective action to advance Africa’s democratic development.
Gbajabiamila who is the immediate past Speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives was the founding Speaker and first chairman of CoSPAL in 2020.
Attending the event on Saturday, the serving Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu who represented the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, PhD canvassed the need for Nigeria to take two out of the five positions to fill the slots from West Africa.
CoSPAL’s constitution provides for 5 Vice Chairpersons as members of audit and advisory committees respectively, to produce one representative from the 5 subregions of the continent which included East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, North Africa and Southern Africa.
Making valid contributions to the rectification of various articles of COSPAL’s Constitution, Kalu proposed a periodic review of the Secretariat’s performance to encourage efficiency, transparency and integrity in Article 10.
He also proposed an appeal process in the case of termination of membership in Article 16 just as he also recommended the flexibility of Article 17, stressing that a clear definition of the word “exceptional circumstances” in the interpretative clause of the article, amongst others be ensured.