The Clerk to the National Assembly (CNA), Barr. Kamoru Ogunlana has underscored the importance of Hansard/Verbatim reporters in parliamentary business despite technological advancement.
By Haruna Salami
The Clerk to the National Assembly (CNA), Barr. Kamoru Ogunlana has underscored the importance of Hansard/Verbatim reporters in parliamentary business despite technological advancement.
He stated this Tuesday at the Annual National Delegates Conference of Association of Hansard/Verbatim reporters of Nigeria held at the National Assembly, Abuja.
The CNA who was represented by Dr. Yahaya Dan-Zaria, the Clerk of the House of Representatives said before this age of technology, without the Hansard reporters, we would not be able to capture the essence of parliamentary business in the votes and proceedings of the parliament.
According to him “every time there is an argument on a particular matter, when a member says that he has not said something, it is only the Hansard reporters that will clear that thing, because they copy, they record things verbatim, but these days with this technology some machines transcribe in the way that you cannot even explain”.
Dr. Dan-Zaria said he has been to British parliament where their mics automatically transcribe the submissions of members of the parliament in such a way that they don’t only transcribe, but they are ready to print.
However, despite technology, he said Hansard reporters are still very relevant when you come to the issue of language barrier, adding “except you develop something that understand every language”.
“One of the problems of technology is that they have this issue of language barrier. Even if you have a transcriber and you are speaking another language the machine cannot understand that language let alone transcribe it. Apparently you need them on ground, even if you have a machine to be able to distinguish between Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and other languages as it were. So, essentially they are like the hearts of the parliament ordinarily.
What they are doing now as a national conference is to bring themselves together because even ECOWAS used to come to the National Assembly every year and borrow like five of them to cover their sessions. This is how important they are. It’s an old practice, but you cannot do away with it.
“There are AI machines that can understand up to 120 languages, but even at that, not all the AI provisions have perfect, complete encyclopedia of the languages. At a point when you ask it some question, it will start looking for answers because the encyclopedia built into it has not covered that area”.
He assured that the National Assembly looks forward to giving Hansard reporters the tools they require, adding that in the last employment, we have employed about 50 because of their importance. “The importance of Hansard Report is not restricted to the chamber itself, even all these committee meetings, coverages of public hearings, etc, Hansard Reporters are supposed to be there. They are very crucial.
The essence of the conference is to harmonize the workings of the Hansard parliamentary reporters, which most people do not understand. And specifically in the last two years, in the National Assembly, most of our Hansard reporters were becoming extinct; they were retiring, so we had to make efforts to borrow some from other institutions to continue our work.
The Executive Secretary, National Assembly Library Trust Fund NALTF, Mr Henry Nwawuba said the relationship between Handsard/Verbatim reporting and National Assembly Library cannot be overemphasized.
Mr. Nwawuba said both institutions are the custodians of knowledge fostering transparency and informed governance and create public trust.
The Executive Secretary was represented by the Head Human Resource and Administration, Mr. Ameh Moses who also tasked the participants to uphold the highest standards of accuracy and integrity.