Senate plans to update federal laws

The Senate has instructed its Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights, and Legal Matters to work with the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation to initiate the process of updating the Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (LFN) 2004.

This followed a motion moved by Senator Kaka Shehu Lawan (APC, Borno Central) during Tuesday’s plenary.

The Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (LFN) are an alphabetical collection of Nigerian laws that are regularly revised to reflect current realities.

The revision of the laws of the Federation of Nigeria is done periodically with the consent of the Attorney General of the Federation, subject to the endorsement of the National Assembly through an Act of Parliament.

While presenting his motion, Shehu explained that the statutes in the LFN were passed in different years before and after Nigeria’s independence, even though they were all referred to as “LFN 2004”.

He said the LFN has not been updated for almost two decades, with the consequence that several laws passed in Nigeria from January 1, 2003, until date remain omitted from the collection.

The federal lawmaker further said there was an effort to update the LFN in 2010, but the effort did not succeed because there was no legal support.

He also expressed worry that the persistent non-updating of LFN has not only left many statutes out of the collection but also kept duplicated statutes with all the confusion inherent in them.

Senator Shehu further observed that the non-collection of several federal statutes leads to a lack of knowledge of many existing laws among Nigerians, especially students, lecturers, researchers, lawyers, legislators, and judges, among others.

He emphasised that the updating of LFN was long overdue and, as such, it will be in the interest of democratic governance in Nigeria to start the updating process without further delay.