The President of the Senate, Dr Ahmad Lawan, says the low rate of members turnover will adversely affect the performance of the 10th National Assembly if the capacity of new members is not quickly built.

Mr Lawan spoke on Thursday when he received the 2020 to 2022 annual reports of the National Assembly Service Commission in Abuja.

“What is critical to us is what happens when we leave. Everybody knows the turn over rate has been very costly and this is without prejudice to anybody elected” Mr Lawan said.

“Costly in the sense that when you have only about 30 percent of members of the ninth National Assembly going to the 10th Assembly, you know that you have lost capacity.”

Explaining further, the senate president said, “You have lost experience,you have lost skills, enterprise and so on and so forth,these are traits that you need to hit the ground running immediately.

“And I use the word costly deliberately because what this means is that, the 10th Assembly, we must make provisions immediately for capacity building for new members of the National Assembly If we want to achieve our goals and set targets.”

Mr Lawan added: “Everybody is enthusiastic, everybody is ready, we want to come in and continue to contribute to making Nigeria better but the parliament is not like the executive.

“Therefore, I am using this channel to sound that advisory that the National Assembly will need money, will need more resources for capacity building for members of the National Assembly that are coming anew, as well as those staff that we will be working with.

“I am not speaking for the 10th National Assembly, that is yet to be inaugurated, but I know having met many of our Senators-elect, they are all ready to start work immediately we are inaugurated and sworn in.”

(NAN)