The Secretary prepares the Orders of the Day — the official daily agenda of the National Assembly — and provides a copy to every member and any person entitled to speak or participate in the House proceedings. Business is transacted in the order it appears. Business not on the Orders of the Day cannot be transacted without the Speaker’s consent.
Why it matters for the National Assembly proceedings?
The Orders of the Day is the authoritative programme of parliamentary business, prepared by the Assembly Secretariat under the Speaker’s direction, not by the government. The purpose is to discourage government and members from introducing agenda without prior notice, and to protect the right of members to prepare for what will be debated. However, the rules also provide for circumventing this requirement.
What is in it for citizens?
Citizens following parliamentary proceedings should check the Orders of the Day, available on the National Assembly website a day before a sitting, to know what will be considered on any given day. The Orders of the Day also provide a record of what was scheduled but not reached, helping track parliamentary backlog.
Source: Rule 57, Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly, 2007
The proceedings of the National Assembly are governed by the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly, 2007. The current rules were passed on 23 February 2007 and have since been amended 21 times, most recently on 22 October 2024.
This post is part of FAFEN’s series on parliamentary literacy. Read more of this series here.
