Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has launched a digital platform to enable businesses, investors and other stakeholders to track proposed legislation at the National Assembly and assess its potential impact on Nigeria’s business environment.
The platform, known as the Business Bill Intelligence Portal, was unveiled by the Ernest Shonekan Centre for Legislative Reforms and Economic Development (ESC), an initiative of the NESG, at the 32nd Nigerian Economic Summit (NES#32) held at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja.
The summit was held under the theme, ‘Growth that Works: Delivering Jobs, Productivity and Shared Prosperity.’
The portal is designed to provide a centralised digital resource through which users can access information on bills, monitor their progress through the legislative process and understand their implications for business operations, investment decisions, market access and regulatory compliance.
Speaking at the launch, Chairman of the Ernest Shonekan Centre, Kyari Bukar, said the initiative was aimed at strengthening informed participation in legislative reforms and aligning lawmaking with Nigeria’s economic development priorities.
‘Laws and proposed legislation can have significant implications for businesses, investment and economic growth. We want to strengthen informed participation in legislative reform and connect lawmaking with Nigeria’s economic development priorities,’ Bukar said.
He added that the centre’s goal was to support clearer and more practical laws that would improve the business environment, encourage investment, create opportunities and protect the public interest.
According to the NESG, stakeholders often face difficulties tracking proposed laws and identifying bills relevant to their sectors, despite the significant influence legislation has on the cost of doing business and the broader investment climate.
The portal seeks to address the challenge by allowing users to browse bills, search for specific legislation, and apply filters to identify proposals relevant to their interests.
It also features an analytics dashboard showing the distribution of bills across different legislative stages, while individual bill pages provide details of each bill’s status, latest recorded action and legislative history.
Executive Director of the Ernest Shonekan Centre, Dr Uchenna Ogbonna, said the platform was designed to serve a broad range of users, including businesses, citizens, civil society organisations, journalists, policy analysts, academics, researchers, government agencies, legislators and National Assembly staff.
‘These groups need legislative information for different purposes. Businesses want to understand proposals affecting their industries, citizens want to know how proposed laws could affect them, and legislators and researchers need information to support their work,’ Ogbonna said.
He said the centre’s focus was to strengthen informed participation in legislation affecting Nigeria’s business environment and economy.
The launch builds on the NESG’s longstanding engagement with legislative institutions to promote reforms aimed at improving the business climate.
In 2016, the group established the National Assembly Business Environment Roundtable (NASSBER) as a platform for dialogue between lawmakers and the private sector on legislative reforms.
The NESG subsequently supported the establishment of the State Assemblies Business Environment Roundtable (SABER), extending the reform engagement to state legislatures.
Established in 2023, the Ernest Shonekan Centre focuses on research, advocacy and stakeholder engagement on legislative reforms and economic development.
The centre said the new portal would strengthen these efforts by improving access to legislative information and promoting constructive engagement among the legislature, private sector, civil society, media and other stakeholders.
The initiative is expected to contribute to Nigeria’s economic reform agenda by helping businesses and citizens better understand proposed laws and participate more effectively in discussions around policies that shape economic activity.