The Sierra Leone Country Office of the Parliamentary Network Africa (PNAfrica) has held a validation meeting with members of Parliament from Various legislative committees to discuss and critically analyze a draft legislative compendium of the fifth Parliament of the Second Republic of Sierra Leone which it commissioned at the beginning of the second half of this year.

This compendium is a body of knowledge developed by an In-House Director, Momodu Deen Rogers who was hired in July 2023 by the Parliamentary Monitoring Organization Headquartered in Accra, Ghana, as a consultant to document the key happenings in the fifth Parliament.

The Validation programme which was held at the Speaker’s Conference room in the premises of the Parliament of Sierra Leone on Wednesday 13th December 2023, brought together a cross-section of legislators to verify some of the information being collected by the consultant to ensure that the document is in sync with the necessary due processes and also meets the standards of international best practices.

In her opening statement, PNAfrica’s Country Representative Ms. Kadijah Bangura stated that this document would serve as a point of reference for MPs to consider and find solutions to some of the issues and challenges faced by the fifth parliament. She added that it would also indicate the highlights of the previous parliamentary sessions. She therefore encouraged the MPs to make their inputs into the compendium to enable the consultant to present a final comprehensive document.

In his remarks, Hon. Mario Conteh who is the chairman of the Legislative Committee in Parliament said, the initiative of putting together a parliamentary compendium is a laudable achievement, and that this would be the first time in the history of Sierra Leone’s parliament where such a detailed document of previous legislations has been prepared.

On his part, the deputy leader of the opposition All People’s Congress (APC) party, Hon. Daniel Koroma said “This document will serve as a novelty for future parliaments.” He urged his colleagues to do justice to the validation process and called on the leadership of parliament to take ownership of the final document.

Several contributors who doubled as administrative staff of parliament contributed to the document and suggested a sizable committee to be formed by PNAfrica and the consultant to enable them to review each page of the draft document until it gets to the final stage of the process.