Two Decades of Legislative Activities in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: Issues, Challenges, and the Way Forward

Abstract

The study examines the legislators’ activities in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. This is to establish the areas of their weaknesses and strengths in the course of performing their constitutional functions. The data for the study were drawn from a primary source, which involved the author’s observations of various events in Nigeria’s polity, and secondary sources which include the 1999 Nigeria Constitution, official documents of the National Assembly, journals, textbooks, newspapers, and magazines. The study identifies the challenges facing legislators’ activities, including lack of political ideology; strain legislative-executive relations; frequent changes of leadership; inadequate knowledge of the legislative process; corruption; and imbalanced selection of house committee leaders. Others include—recurrent disruption of plenary sessions; intermittent cross carpeting among members; absenteeism from the legislative plenary sessions; self-centeredness of members; and a high number of dependent political followers. The challenges notwithstanding, the Senate was able to pass into law 735 bills for twenty years; and also succeeded in investigating various anomalies being perpetrated in the public offices in Nigeria, including those of the National Assembly. The study concludes that the legislative activities in the early years of the two decades of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic were hectic and could be seen as a period of “trial legislative process.” The study recommends that concerted efforts should be made to address those challenges halting legislative activities in Nigeria for the sustenance and advancement of the country’s budding democracy.