The small office behind Committee Room II on the second floor of the National Assembly is the documentation epicentre of parliamentary business.  

On Monday, June 20, 2016 at 9:30 am, the working atmosphere was tense in a small office located behind Committee Room II on the second floor of the National Assembly. The Office Head for Plenary at the National Assembly, 35-year-old Tiku Ivo Tebo could be seen pacing back and forth, waiting for the Photocopy office to make available copies of a Bill that the Chairmen’s Conference had to study at 10 am.

Luckily, the documents arrived on time to be placed in the Committee Room III before the House Speaker arrived to chair the meeting. This was one rare moment of anxiety in the little office that for several years now has been affectionately called “BEAC”. Sources said the nickname was given by the former Director of Legislation, Emmanuel Njitone, given the office’s importance. The main office space has a table and two chairs while an inner chamber is walled by shelves where documents needed for work in committee and plenary sittings, are neatly arranged.

“My role as Office Head is to ensure that documents which are needed are made available. I prepare the documents, the files and name tags before the Chairmen’s conference,” he explained. After the bill is admitted by the Chairmen’s Conference for scrutiny, Tiku Ivo and his team send copies to the CPDM and SDF main parliamentary groups and to parliamentary secretariat for the rest of the parties which do not have parliamentary groups. The rest of the documents are given to pressmen and interpreters. Any close observer of parliamentary business at the National Assembly quickly understands the central logistics role played by the little “BEAC” office.

In effect, the pace of parliamentary business will be serious hampered if the “BEAC” staff yield to any hitch. To succeed, Tiku counts on teamwork with the rest of the Service for Plenary and Committee staff in the Division of Legislation and Logistics Affairs. Equally omnipresent in the “BEAC” office is the Office Head in charge of Committees, Enow Dorothy Agbor, whose sure steps and precision in the distribution of documents and logistics during committee meetings betray a high sense of organisation common amongst the “BEAC” staff.