Daily Trust correspondent puts the four journalists that made it to the House of Representatives on the spotlight while highlighting the role expected of them as media practitioners.

When the 7th House of Representatives was inaugurated four years ago, there were only three known journalists in the midst of the 360 lawmakers that made up the lower chamber of the National Assembly.

The three lawmakers were Abike Dabiri-Erewa, representing Ikorodu Federal constituency of Lagos State, Ezuiche Ubani, representing Obinwa/Ugunagbo/Osisioma federal constituency of Abia State and Zakari Mohammed representing Baruten/Kaiama federal constituency of Kwara State.

Mohammed was assigned to chair the House committee on media and public affairs, with Abike chaired diaspora committee and Ubani was charged with heading the climate change committee.

Ubani was political editor of ThisDay and later Sunday editor of the now rested Comet newspaper while Dabiri-Erewa was a famous NTA reporter in Lagos and Mohammed, a radio personality before becoming a legislator.

While two of the three lawmakers, Dabiri-Erewa and Ubani have failed to return to the chamber, three new journalists will be part of the incoming 8th Assembly, including a former president of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ).

Therefore, by June 6 when the 8th Assembly would be inaugurated, the lower chamber will have four ex-journalists. They are Sani Zorro, former NUJ president, representing Sule-Tankarkar/Gagarawa federal constituency of Jigawa State, Timothy Golu, representing Pankshin/Kanam/Kanke federal constituency of Plateau State, Abdulrazak Sa'ad Namdas representing Jada/Ganye/Toungo/Mayo-Belwa federal constituency of Adamawa State, as well as the only returnee among the previous set, Zakari Mohammed from Kwara State.

Zorro, a newspaper veteran, was NUJ president who worked with the Triumph Newspaper of Kano State Government and later the defunct Concord Newspapers of late Chief M. K. O. Abiola but later worked with The Sun Newspapers as its Northern operations editor. He later floated a newspaper in Abuja but it folded up. He contested the seat under the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in 2011 but lost to the outgoing member.

Golu was also political and later news editor of Leadership Newspaper before resigning to contest for a seat in the Plateau State House of Assembly which he won and became the member representing Kanke constituency. Elected on the PDP platform, he was appointed the chief whip of the House by his colleagues. Namdas, on his part, started his journalism career with the Daily Times and contested as secretary of the NUJ in Adamawa State. He was later appointed chief press secretary to Governor Boni Haruna and served in that capacity between 2004 to 2007. He later set up The Viewer Newspaper before contesting as the deputy governorship candidate of the defunct ACN in Adamawa State with Mathias Gundiri as the governorship candidate.

With the coming of this new set, the House of Representatives - mostly dominated by lawyers and academicians - will likely witness a paradigm shift in the nature of debate to matters on the floor, since journalism is seen "as an umbrella of all branches of knowledge," and in the more open running of legislative affairs. There are instances in the past when the public felt the House could have done better with more media men in the legislative chamber.

In the 2015 budget defence by ministries, parastatals and government agencies, which was just passed by the lower chamber, the traditional media coverage of such defences were surprisingly avoided by some committees.

The annual inter-face between members of all standing committees with their respective government agencies is seen as an avenue where lobby for contracts plays critical role in passing a particular ministry's budget proposal.

The lawmakers have a traditional closed-door meeting with officials of any agency or ministry during the budget defence, either at the end of the open meeting or before the commencement of the defence. And the media is always kept in dark of what transpires at such meetings.

And when the attention of the country turned to the politics on the land, various committees of the House conducted secret budget defence at the time when the National Assembly was on primary elections recess, to allow members fully concentrate on their grassroots political mobilisation.

But the legislators, in a typical fashion, came out to deny any of such secret budget defence, which saw the return to the open interactions between the legislators and the executives.

Scenarios like this made the incoming ex-NUJ president to say that a number of media practitioners in the National Assembly often forget their background and get carried away by the number of issues in the Assembly.

Zorro, in an interview in December, said as the performance of his legislative task goes unimpeded, so would his media background knowledge come into play.

"There are many issues to tackle at the National Assembly that they sometimes forget they are media practitioners. Members are open to a new world entirely and they forget whether they are journalists or architects.

"That is not what I am accusing my colleagues of. I know that is what it is all about. While I will perform normal legislative duties, I will also be mindful of my media background," he said in the interview.

Namdas, on the other hand, has made it clear that one of his priorities would be to see to the improvement of the welfare of journalists and also see to their involvement in governance instead of the cat and mouse relationship that exists between the two.

The former NUJ state secretary said he has a passion for seeing things done in the right and proper way that things should be done and will, in the tradition of journalism, try to bring that to bear in his legislative duty. This, he said, includes job creation, provision of infrastructure and the security of lives and property.

He has also promised to see that he reconciles the big politicians in his state to work together for the benefit of the state.

Analysts posit that with a more balanced House, with members from different professions, legislation would be more sound, effective and detailed since such experiences would greatly stimulate presentation of motions, sponsorship of bills or even public hearing inputs.

But overall, an Assembly where journalists' participation is on the increase means a more vibrant House where the debates would be based on sound facts and figures, meaningful contributions and above all, weeding out unimportant motions or poorly presented bills.

It also promises to bring a radical change in the way and manner government officials relate with lawmakers. There is the likelihood of in-depth questions from committees headed by such journalists during oversights visits or during budget defences.