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This book examines the role of the legislature in the democratic governance of Nigeria. Once one of the foremost political institutions of governance established in the early days of Colonial administration in Nigeria, the legislature has had an inconsistent role since statehood, subject to repeat dissolution at the hands of various military regimes. Focusing on the Nigerian Fourth Republic’s National Assembly (1999-present), this book discusses in detail the ways in which the national assembly has handled each of its major functions, the nature of the relationship between the assembly and the legislature, and the institutional mechanism through which its internal business is facilitated and executed. Furthermore, the chapters examine the level of assertiveness of the legislature, and the degree of importance and weight attached to their contributions to governance in motions, resolutions, and law-making. This book offers a unique look into legislative studies, an area which has been historically overlooked in the research on the Nigerian government, and will be useful to students and researchers in African studies, democracy and state-building and legislative studies.
This book evaluates the legislative effectiveness of Nigeria’s National Assembly under the Fourth Republic. The assessment covers five Assemblies (4th–8th) and focuses specifically on lawmaking, cost of running the National Assembly, and the budget making process. It empirically assesses the effectiveness of the Nigerian national legislature beyond previous emotional and sentimental evaluations of the institution. It has developed a model ‘Institutional Legislative Effectiveness Score’ used in assessing the institutional performance of the National Assembly from two perspectives: first, by comparing the performances of the two chambers in the same Assembly; and second, by comparing the performances of the institution across Assemblies. Aside lawmaking, the book also covers the major topical issues that characterized public evaluation of the institution. These include: size of the institution, budgeting process, cost of funding the institution, and the debate on the appropriate way in reforming the National Assembly.
This book examines the problem of accountability in two African political systems, South Africa and Nigeria. Despite the principle of separation of powers and the doctrine of checks and balances among the institutions of governance, a burgeoning governance crisis stifles the potential of accountability and good governance. Legislative oversight in the two countries remains largely ineffective while citizens are left to face the consequences of the mismanagement of public resources by political elites. This book critically assesses how the legislative institutions in South Africa and Nigeria have been unable to harness the requisite constitutional powers to ensure accountability in government...
Minorities of the oil-producing states are seriously disturbed by the inequity that is apparent from the existing principles of revenue allocation in Nigeria. In taking issues with them and other southern advocates of new revenue allocation criteria, the dominant north's organic intellectuals have always relied on the obvious concentration of economic and commercial activities in southern Nigeria to refute the argument that the north is the greater beneficiary of Nigeria's wealth. Scholarly contribution to the ethno-regional debate on the equity of resource allocation has been anchored to the same popular platform, namely, the criteria for inter-governmental revenue allocation. It is as if t...
Health law and policy in Nigeria is an evolving and complex field of law, spanning a broad legal landscape and drawn from various sources. In addressing and interacting with these sources the volume advances research on health care law and policy in Nigeria and spells the beginning of what may now be formally termed the ’Nigerian health law and policy’ legal field. The collection provides a comparative analysis of relevant health policies and laws, such as reproductive and sexual health policy, organ donation and transplantation, abortion and assisted conception, with those in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and South Africa. It critically examines the duties and rights of phys...
Recent years have witnessed substantial work in the legislative studies field. But what do we know about legislatures today and are there clear criteria for comparing and classifying them? This is a new review of the state of our knowledge of parliament and tackles key questions: Do legislatures matter in legislative terms, and, if so, how much? What is the extent of the legislature’s control of the legislative process. How can we classify legislatures on the basis of their relative legislative performance. Five measures of the policy power of parliaments are applied in the country/region chapters. This book was previously published as a special issue of the leading Journal of Legislative Studies.
This handbook provides critical analyses of the theory and practices of small arms proliferation and its impact on conflicts and organized violence in Africa. It examines the terrains, institutions, factors and actors that drive armed conflict and arms proliferation, and further explores the nature, scope, and dynamics of conflicts across the continent, as well as the extent to which these conflicts are exacerbated by the proliferation of small arms. The volume features rich analyses by contributors who are acquainted with, and widely experienced in, the formal and informal structures of arms proliferation and control, and their repercussions on violence, instability and insecurity across Af...
This volume seeks to explain why democratization and military reforms stagnate in newly democratizing countries. The contributions blend historical, ideational, cultural and structural explanatory factors to analyze the trajectories of military reform in Indonesia and Nigeria, two major regional powers that share many structural commonalities. In the tradition of the literature on security sector reform (SSR), the book not only scrutinizes executive initiatives toward military reform, but also provides ample coverage of societal actors. Findings show that while military reform is stagnating in both countries, societal forces ought to be taken into account more as major driving forces in explaining military reform. Several chapters study how legislatures, non-governmental organizations and the civilian defence epistemic community contribute to the transformation of military institutions. The last part of the book tackles another aspect rarely studied in the literature on military reform, namely, the role of militias in military reform.