The Nigerian National Assembly is being perceived to have copied and pasted new laws on disease control from Singapore. The lawmakers have been inuring public wrath over suspected adoption of stereotype Infectious Diseases Act of 1977 legislation from Singapore in the controversial Infectious Disease Control Bill being legislated on by the federal legislators.
The speed at which Nigerian federal lawmakers initiated and propelled the passage of the bill by fiat without proper legislative procedures, generated suspicions on the motive of the lawmakers. More importantly, the format the bill was drafted provoked overarching criticisms and rejection across Nigeria. Invariably, the Infectious Disease Control bill has become unpopular across the country; the unpopularity and wide rejection erase the legitimacy of the proposed law before Nigerians. The bill already suffers sociological conflicts, create a burden of distrust even before its passage by the lawmakers.
Inquiries by certain stakeholders in the polity discovered that the proposed bill is a modified carbon copy of Singapore’s Infectious Diseases Act of 1977 enacted during the dictatorial regime of President Lee Kuan Yu.
The clerical writers of the bill were found to constantly erase Singapore from the content, replacing it with the comprador bourgeoisie in the Nigerian National Assembly standing as authors and sponsors of the draft bill.
It was gathered that deeper investigations revealed that the document screened via anti-plagiarism software exposed that the Nigerian version of infectious disease control bill is 98 per cent the content of the Singapore original act written 43 years ago.
According to a source, “in an attempt to justify legislation via Google, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Right Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, was unabashed.” He was cited to have admitted that – It was “reasonable for parliamentarians to look elsewhere for existing legislation that deals with similar policy goals.”
Invariably, in the desperation to generate unpopular laws form external environment, the federal lawmakers succumbed plagiarism of existing law of a dictatorial regime in Asia.