Democratic Consolidation and Challenges of Legislative Politics in Nigeria : A Political Economy Approach

Abstract

Democracy is consolidated when the three organs of government (especially the legislature), channel their functions towards socio-economic and political advancement. These advancements especially the aspects of employment creation, provision of good road networks, electricity, pipe borne water and other infrastructural developments, would alleviate hardship on the citizenry. Most of these amenities are provided with the assistance of the legislature. The presence of these, suggests a real democratic consolidation. Therefore, this paper examines democratic consolidation and challenges of legislative politics in Nigeria from 1999-2011. Methodologically, data for this paper were generated mainly from secondary sources of recorded human documents. Accordingly, democracy in Nigeria cannot be consolidated amidst high level legislative bickering and hooliganism that characterized the nation’s parliament. Hence, it is a game of selfishness versus furtherance of one’s economic aggrandizement amongst the legislators, living the innocent citizens to die in cold blood with irrelevant bills passed almost on daily basis. As such, members of the National Assembly are not helping the country in any way due to the fact that 28% of Nigeria’s overhead cost is been spent on them, thereby leaving most sectors of the economy to suffer untold setback. Finally, the paper suggests that a true federation, institutional rebuilding and effective distribution of social welfare, should be adopted and practiced as conditions for democratic consolidation in Nigeria today.