Kaduna — Senate President David Mark has called for financial independence for the National Assembly (NASS) as executive control of its finances is stalling its capacity to perform its most basic functions of representation, lawmaking and oversight.

In a keynote address at the opening of a two day seminar on Strategic Visioning in the National Assembly organized by the Policy Analysis and Research Project (PARP) in Kaduna yesterday, the Senate President said the legislature should, like judiciary source its finances from the federation account.

"Parliaments in most emerging democracies seem to be content with the executive drawing up the economic agenda while they approve. They are also content with traditional roles of oversight no matter how poorly implemented and seem to only respond to executive leadership on most matters. This is a far cry from what parliaments can do."

Senator Mark, who was represented by Senator Kabiru Gaya, said parliaments in developing countries performed only a fraction of their responsibilities of ensuring transparent government practices, ensure more equitable distribution of resources, provide forum for people's voices to be heard and enact legislation that target economic develo-pment.

Mark said this is because executive control of parliament's finances chokes it from developing the capacity to serve its most basic functions. Other reasons he gave for this state of affairs is that the legislators and staff are poorly trained and equipped for these responsibilities and the lack of defined and focused legislative agenda.