With 23 Nigerian lawmakers preparing for another costly foreign training trip in two weeks, National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS) Director-General, Prof. Abubakar Sulaiman, is urging a rethink: Why keep flying our leaders abroad when Africa can be its own classroom?
Speaking at an ECOWAS Parliament workshop in Abuja, Sulaiman dismissed the value of many overseas programmes, arguing that Ivy League and European courses often ignore Africa’s real governance challenges.
“We have the expertise, the facilities, and the resources here,” he said, warning that the coming trip will drain a hefty—but undisclosed—sum from public coffers.
Instead of exporting training budgets, NILDS plans to reverse the flow. This October, it will roll out an Advanced Executive Education Programme in Abuja, designed to match global prestige while grounding lessons in African realities. “If it’s the dollars that attract people, we can charge in dollars. If it’s white faces, we’ll collaborate with them. But the training must take place here,” he declared.
NILDS is already training parliaments from Malawi, Somalia, Namibia, and Uganda, and has just inked a three-year MoU with a foreign partner—proof, Sulaiman says, that Africa can be the continent’s legislative training hub.
With shrinking budgets and waning donor funds, he believes the case is clear: “We are born to lead. Our capacity-building must start here, not in someone else’s classroom.”
