National Assembly is set to translate Nigerian laws into major indigenous languages, including Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo, as part of efforts to deepen public access to legislative information.

The Executive Secretary of the National Assembly Library Trust Fund, Henry Nwawuba, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja while declaring open the 2026 National Assembly Library Week.

The three-day event, themed “Parliamentary Memory: Connecting Records, Legislation and the People,” is designed to promote legislative research, access to information and effective utilisation of the resources of the National Assembly Library.

Nwawuba described the library as the knowledge infrastructure of the legislature and a repository of parliamentary records, saying it was working to ensure that lawmakers, legislative aides, researchers and other stakeholders could access authoritative records, including Order Papers, Votes and Proceedings, committee reports and Acts passed by the National Assembly.

He said the Trust Fund was investing in electronic repositories and upgrading its E-Library, while developing a National Assembly Library mobile application to make legislative information more accessible.

According to him, the library is also developing a Bills Tracker to enable users follow bills and monitor their progress through the legislative process.

Nwawuba added that infographics, audiovisual materials and video explainers were being developed to simplify Bills, Acts and legislative procedures for Nigerians.

He said the planned translation of laws into local languages would broaden access to legislative information and enable more citizens to understand laws affecting their daily lives.

The Executive Secretary also announced plans to organise public policy dialogues to encourage citizens’ participation in public hearings and create greater interaction among legislators, citizens, researchers and other stakeholders.

He said the initiatives were also intended to address inconsistencies in official parliamentary documents and the circulation of fake or unauthorised copies of National Assembly records.

The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, represented by Senator Osita Ngwu, urged lawmakers to make greater use of the library, particularly amid increasing misinformation, disinformation and the rapid development of artificial intelligence.

Similarly, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Abbas Tajudeen, represented by the House Leader, Prof. Julius Ihonvbere, said legislative records were essential to understanding Nigeria’s legislative history and strengthening democratic governance.

Tajudeen said technology and artificial intelligence could improve legislative research, preservation of records and access to information, but stressed that their adoption must be guided by accuracy, security and professional judgment.

The Clerk to the National Assembly, Kamoru Ogunlana, said the National Assembly could not be truly independent without the capacity to generate, preserve, retrieve and authenticate its institutional knowledge and records.

Ogunlana identified the Order Paper, Votes and Proceedings and Hansard as key components of Nigeria’s democratic memory, while warning against the circulation of incomplete, outdated, altered or unauthorised Bills, Acts and other parliamentary documents.

He said the integrity of an Act depended not only on the existence of a document, but also on the ability to establish its authentic and authoritative version and the legal process through which it emerged.

The Clerk also highlighted the challenges associated with the continued widespread use of the Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, LFN 2004, explaining that the compilation was not automatically updated whenever a new Act was enacted.

He called for stronger cybersecurity, digital preservation, secure authentication, access controls, backup systems and staff training as parliamentary records become increasingly digitised.

Ogunlana further warned that while digitisation would make parliamentary information easier to access, search and disseminate, it could also expose records to cyberattacks, manipulation and impersonation of official sources.

He said digital platforms must therefore be accessible and secure, while electronic records must remain available, authentic and traceable.

The Clerk said the National Assembly Library should evolve beyond being a repository for documents to an institution where parliamentary knowledge is preserved, authenticated and made accessible to lawmakers, researchers, journalists, civil society organisations, students and the wider public.

The President of the Nigerian Library Association, Dr Lawal Umar, called for sustained investment in libraries and modern information technology to improve access to legislative information, while urging stronger collaboration between the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly.

The Secretary-General of the Conference of Speakers of African Legislatures, Amb. Debo Oyewale, said African legislatures had much to learn from one another in building institutions capable of preserving legislative memory.