Being a text of a paper presented on the 5th May, 2015 by Mark I. Hirnyam (Senior Admin Officer) at the weekly seminar of the Department of Research and Statistics, National Assembly, Abuja.
INTRODUCTION
It is widely
acclaimed that the legislature is the most unique feature of democracy. Since
everybody in the society cannot sit to preside over their affairs at the same
time, representative democracy suggests that specific number of persons is
elected by the people to represent them in an institution known as the
legislature. According to James Madison in Oko O. 2014, the essence of
representative government is to refine and enlarge the public views by passing
them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best
discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of
justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial
considerations[1].
In
Nigeria, the legislature comprises of the National Assembly, State Houses of
Assembly and legislative arms of the Local Government Councils. For the purpose
of this discussion, we shall dwell more on the National Assembly.
Section
4 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria vests the
Legislative powers of the Federation in the National Assembly. In particular,
Section 4, sub Section 1 clearly states that the legislative powers of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be vested in the National Assembly for the Federation
which shall consist of Senate and a House of Representatives. The provisions of
Section 4, sub section 1 show that the National Assembly of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria has the responsibility of making laws for the good
governance of the Federation and is bicameral in nature.
The 1999
Constitution (as amended) in Sections 47-51 provide for the establishment of
the National Assembly, composition of the Senate, composition of the House of
Representatives, offices of the President of the Senate and Speaker of the
House of Representatives and offices for Bureaucratic Staff of the National
Assembly. Sections 54-56 dwell on Quorum, Languages and Voting in the
legislature.
The Constitution
vests on the legislature certain powers and privileges to exercise its roles
not only as a lawmaking institution but also empowers it to serve as check on
the executive which to a large extent defines legislative autonomy and
parliamentary supremacy. Under the 1999 constitution (as amended), the National
Assembly has the powers to make all laws in Section 4(2); power to create new states in Section 8(1); power
of the National Assembly to prescribe the method of appointment of the Clerk of
the National Assembly in Section 51; power to appropriate funds in Sections 80-83;
power to receive the audited accounts of the Federation in Section 85 (2); power
to remove auditor general of the federation from office in Section 86 (1 &
2); power of investigation into the activities of the executive in Section
88(1); power to procure evidence in Section
89(1); power to impeach President and /or Vice President in Section 143; power
to confirm appointments in Section 147 (2); as well as power to appoint and
remove chairmen and members of federal boards in Section 154 (1) etc.
The
legislature therefore serves as link between the people and those who govern
them. Such elected representatives are saddled with the task of acting on
behalf of their people, relating their concerns, issues and opinions to
lawmaking and other legislative activities.
Since 1999
when Nigeria returned to the path of democracy, elections to fill the 109
Senate and 360 House of Representatives seats of the federal legislature are
held every four years. Therefore, National Assembly elections have been held 5
times since 1999, the recent being the just concluded 2015 elections.
OUTCOME OF THE 2015 NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
ELECTIONS
On
March 28th 2015, the National Assembly elections were once more held
in Nigeria. Analysis of the election results shows the following:
Senate
61 of
the Senators have been elected on the APC platform and 48 on the PDP platform.
Additionally,
the result also suggests that the Senate of the 8th National
Assembly will still be dominated by men. Unlike the 6 we have in the outgoing
Senate, 8 out of the 109-member Senate of the National Assembly are women.
House of Representatives
According
to the INEC online portal the outcome of the March 28, 2015 House of
Representatives polls shows that APC members are now 209, against the Peoples
Democratic Party, which has 133 lawmakers. The All Progressives Grand Alliance
(APGA) has 5, while the Labour Party, Social Democratic Party and Accord Party all
have one each, bringing the total to 360.
Rate of Turnover in the National Assembly
It is
common knowledge that from 1999, at the commencement of every legislative House
in the National Assembly, a significant number of legislators do not return
after elections. It is asserted that since the inception of democracy in 1999,
the reelection rate of federal legislators in Nigeria has never exceeded 32%.
The table below shows the rate of turnover of federal legislators from 2003 to
2011.
Senate
PERIOD/YEAR
OF LEGISLATION
|
NUMBER
RETURNED
|
RETENTION
RATE
|
2003
|
33
out of 109
|
30.27%
|
2007
|
25
out of 109
|
22.93%
|
2011
|
34
out of 109
|
31.19%
|
House
of Representatives
PERIOD/YEAR
OF LEGISLATION
|
NUMBER
RETURNED
|
RETENTION
RATE
|
2003
|
102
out of 360
|
28.33%
|
2007
|
99
out of 360
|
27.5%
|
2011
|
108
out of 360
|
30%
|
Source: Study conducted by National
Institute of Legislative Studies (NILS) in Oko O. 2014
The result
of the 2015 National Assembly elections shows that in the Senate, out of the
109 Senators elected, only 30 of them got reelected. This shows a 27.5% rate of
turnover.
According
to the Punch Newspapers, about 302 out of the 360 members of the House of
Representatives will not return to their seats when the 8th
session of the National Assembly begins in June 2015.[2] If we
follow this assertion, we will observe that only 58 House of Representatives
members got reelected. This also shows a 16.1% rate of turnover.
Table showing the Rate of turnover of
reelected legislators in 2015
Senate
PERIOD/YEAR
OF LEGISLATION
|
NUMBER
RETURNED
|
RETENTION
RATE
|
2015
|
30
|
27.5%
|
House of Representatives
PERIOD/YEAR
OF LEGISLATION
|
NUMBER
RETURNED
|
RETENTION
RATE
|
2015
|
58
|
16.1%
|
The
challenge of having a legislative house that produces an insignificant level of
reelected legislators affects not only the level of experience in the area of
lawmaking but also legislative practice and procedure. Lawmaking is a tedious
art that requires painstaking rudiments which must be followed in order to
avoid making ambiguous laws that would be vulnerable enough for mischief makers
to take advantage. Going back memory lane to the First Republic were the entire
legislature was comprised of new people who had no prior experience in the area
of lawmaking or legislative practice and procedure, we will notice that during
the entire four-year civilian term, only one bill was introduced
and passed entirely by the Members, while all other legislation was initiated
by the Presidency. The Assembly did not exercise significant oversight of the
executive or other government operations[3].
Having
gone through 16 years of democratic governance in Nigeria, it is expected that
the gains of democracy include consolidating on democratic structures like government
institutions. However, a low turnover rate of legislators does not depict the
rate of positive change that our legislature in particular and country deserve;
especially in this period were it is generally acclaimed that the voice of the
people have spoken more, in terms of the 2015 election were the opposition APC
has been voted in as the major party to constitute the central government.
In
order to deal with this kind of scenario of possible large number of newly
elected legislators without prior legislative knowledge, this paper attempts to
briefly bring to note the USA practice of staggered elections. In the United
States of America, Senators serve terms of six years each; the terms are
staggered so that approximately one-third of the seats are up for election
every two years. This was achieved by dividing the Senators of the 1st
Congress into thirds (called classes), where the terms of one-third expired
after two years, the terms of another third expired after four, and the terms
of the last third expired after six years. This arrangement was also followed
after the admission of new states into the union. The staggering of terms has
been arranged such that both seats from a given state are not contested in the
same general election, except when a mid-term vacancy is being filled. Current
senators whose six-year terms expire on January 3, 2017, belong to Class III[4]. This
means that during every senatorial election in the USA, at least 67 Senators
will be retained even if none of the 33 Senators whose tenure expire, as a
result of staggered elections did not get reelected.
ZONING OF PUBLIC OFFICES IN NIGERIA
With a
vast population of over 170m people, Nigeria is acclaimed to have over 350
ethnic tribes and languages demarcated into 6 geo-political zones, 36 states
and 774 local government areas. Given this large population of people, it is
often argued that a stereotype arrangement be put in place to guarantee that
all sections of the country occupy leadership positions at different times.
Zoning
of public offices in Nigeria therefore means that public offices are
apportioned to various parts of the country for the same purpose of fair play
and equity. Arguments against zoning are not far from the disadvantages of the
federal character system in Nigeria which is adjudged in some quarters as
promoting mediocrity and incompetence at the expense of quality and value.
Using
the outcome of the 2015 National Assembly elections, where the All Progressive
Congress (APC) constitutes the majority in both Houses; the party is expected
to produce the presiding officers of both Houses i.e. the Senate President, the
Speaker, and their Deputies. If the zoning principle is adopted this time round,
one will assume that the APC, having elected General Mohammadu Buhari and Prof.
Yemi Osibanjo from the North-West and South-West zones of the country
respectively, will naturally allocate these four positions to the other
remaining four zones. By virtue of the inability of the APC to produce (ranking)
legislators from the South-East and South-South parts of the country, it is also
right to think that legislators from these zones will not be included in the
prediction of who become the presiding officers of the National Assembly.
Hence, favoring the North-East and North-Central zones in the contest for
presiding officers of both Houses of the National Assembly.
There
is no gain overemphasizing the fact that there might have been a possibility of
better qualified candidates for these positions in other parts of the country,
but for the zoning formula which automatically screens them out of the race,
the country’s lost, would be a geographical zone’s gain. Thus, out of the major
contenders for the office of the Senate Presidency, lawmakers from Kwara State
(North Central) may also be considered less likely to emerge since they could
be regarded as coming from the same tribe as the Vice President, and not
because they are less qualified or incompetent.
LEGISLATIVE PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE:
Ranking in the Legislature
Section
60 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), empowers the National Assembly to
formulate rules for its proceedings. In accordance with this provision, the
Senate and House of Representatives have formulated rules and orders that help
to regulate their proceedings and activities. In this regard, the formal rules
of the Senate are contained in the Senate Standing Orders, while the rules of
the House of Representatives are contained in the House Standing Orders.
According
to Prof. Okechukwu Oko, the Rules emphasize democratic governance, decorum and
orderliness in the National Assembly. The major contents of the Rules include;
election of Principal Officers, process of lawmaking, voting in the
legislature, committee system, motions, resolutions, chamber proceedings,
public hearing, oversight, powers and functions of principal officers and other
activities carried out by both Houses in the course of their legislative duties.
Since these rules are made by legislators themselves, they can be revised,
amended, repealed or even put aside by the legislature at any time.
On
assumption of the new legislature in June 2015, the first major legislative
activity, both Houses of the National Assembly will undertake, will be to elect
their Presiding Officers. In electing these firsts
amongst equals, the Senate will rely on the Senate Standing Orders (2011,
as amended) were it not jettisoned. The Standing Orders of the Senate stipulates
that any Senator who has been elected and has been reelected into the chamber
has preference over a member who is newly elected into the chamber.
Chapter
II (2) of Senate Standing Orders provides that, “the following order shall
apply: (i) Senators returning based on number of times re-elected; (ii)
Senators who had been members of the House of Representatives; (iii) Senators
elected as Senators for the first time.”[5] Based on
the Rule, only Senators who are reelected for further terms or are former House
of Representatives may be part of the Presiding and Principal Officers of the
Senate of the 8th National Assembly. This also explains why, for
example, Sen. Francis Alimikhena from
Edo North may not be eligible to be a candidate for the Senate Presidency or
even a Principal Officer (even though he hails from the South-South region)
since he is only a new senator elected for the first time.
The situation is the same in the House of
Representatives where the ranking rule is also prescribed in the House Standing
Orders. Order II, Rule 4(a) provides that the election of Speaker shall be
conducted in the following manner: a Member-elect, addressing the Clerk, shall
propose another member-elect with legislative experience as member of the
National Assembly to the House to be Speaker and shall move that such member…[6]
The United States where we copied our system of
democracy also has the seniority principle in practice. According to the
convention of Senate seniority, the senator with the longer tenure in each
state is known as the "senior senator"; the other is the "junior
senator". This convention does not have official significance, though it
is a factor in the selection of physical offices. In the 114th
Congress, the most-senior "junior senator" is Barbara Boxer of California,
who was sworn in on January 3, 1993 and is currently 11th in seniority, behind
Dianne Feinstein who was sworn in on November 4, 1992 and is currently 10th
in seniority. The most-junior "senior senator" is Deb Fischer of
Nebraska, who was sworn in January 3, 2013, and is currently 84th in seniority,
ahead of Senator Ben Sasse who was sworn in January 3, 2015 and is currently 99th
in seniority[7].
If we compare the practice in the US with Nigeria,
we will note that seniority or ranking is no doubt a common feature in both
legislatures. This means that seniority is a very important concept in the
legislature. However, the practice in the US suggests that it is a mere
convention that does not have official significance but goes ahead to rank
every individual Senator, determining their ranking positions, while in
Nigeria, the principle of ranking is embedded in the Standing Orders of the
Senate. For this reason, except where it is put aside, the rule on ranking will
always guide the election of presiding officers in the legislature.
Recommendation/Way
Forward
It is right to state at this juncture that the
position of the legislature in a democratic setting is central to obtaining the
dividends of democracy. Only the legislature is empowered to act directly on
behalf of those they represent. Therefore, expanding the vitality of the
legislature ought to be one of the gains of 16 years of uninterrupted democracy
in Nigeria. However, political actions/output in recent times have shown that
the legislature must be positioned in such a manner as to absorb whatever
political situation or equation the country finds itself at any period in time.
It is equally not out of place to suggest that it
is a good for democracy to see that the minority party in the just concluded
elections has a significant representation in the National Assembly, depicted
by 48 out of 109 Senators i.e. just 13 less than the majority party. In the
House of Representatives also, the opposition parties are represented so far by
a reasonable number of 141 Members i.e. approximately 31.1% composition of the
House of Representatives. If the Court of Appeal upholds the verdict of the
lower court that lawmakers, who defect from their political parties to other
ones, vacate their seats, then it is expected that the number of political
party representation in the legislature will remain as it is, at least for a
while. The significant size of opposition parties in the federal legislature
suggests that unlike the state legislature where most Houses of Assembly have
overwhelming number of the majority party in the state, the very significant
support of minority political parties especially the PDP in making decisions of
the National Assembly will be beneficial to the overall good of the vast common
Nigerians. A fresh case in mind dates back to 2011when the defunct minority ACN
and CPC political parties teamed up with some PDP members to defy the zoning
arrangement of the PDP for the election of presiding officers in the House of
Representatives at the commencement of the National Assembly.
Hence, all things being equal, unless, the majority
party does the right thing, it will not get the required support from the
minority political parties to make certain important decisions, given a case
for checks and balances between the majority and the minority. The negative
effect of such situation is a possibility of legislative activities having to
linger-on more than necessary, due to diverse positions of political party on
issues that come up for deliberation in the National Assembly. Overall, it will
be easier for Nigerians to know which party is pro-people oriented and which is
anti-people.
I would suggest the US system to buttress the need
to develop the capacity of legislators (even the newly elected ones). Like the vice president of the
United States of America, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate does not
normally preside over the Senate, but typically delegates the responsibility of
presiding to junior senators of the majority party, usually in blocks of one
hour on a rotating basis. Frequently, freshmen senators (newly elected members)
are asked to preside so that they may become accustomed to the rules and
procedures of the body. In this way, legislators tend to learn faster the
practice and procedure of the legislature, just as a legislature which is
increasingly informed is deemed to perform more in terms of its functions of
lawmaking, representation and oversight.
In future, the legislature in
Nigeria should develop ways of retaining a substantial amount of knowledge and
experience, since these attributes contribute to the growth of the legislature
and democracy at large. One will note that staggered elections in the US ensure
that at every point in time, there is a substantial amount of legislators available
to perform legislative activities in the country.
I am also of the view that if
we curtail corruption and nepotism to a minimal level, the issue of zoning will
not feature prominently in electing political leaders; since an individual is
not elected to be Senate President of a particular zone but Nigeria. Acting on
behalf of the entire nation with equity and justice will reduce the tensions
created by being biased in decision making or the feelings of marginalization. This also means that purposeful representation and
leadership will likely do away with apportioning positions which in most times,
disregards the best fit and competent candidate from assuming such
positions. Hence,
people will begin to clamor for the best candidate and not candidates from
their respective zones, states or even ethnic extraction.
CONCLUSION
Let me conclude by observing
that democracy depends deeply on a constant improving legislature so as to
enable it create new ideas, legislate adequate laws and policies that would ensure
that citizens get absolute benefit from democracy. It is pertinent to observe
that the growth of democracy in Nigeria has caused the legislature to also
expand its capacity as an arm of government and could be seen in the reduced
tensions between the executive and the legislature over time. One will imagine
that the National Assembly was able to deal with the demise of a sitting
President more because, it was characterized by informed and relatively
experienced legislators who had the capacity to preside over the legislature
during that time.
One aspect of the legislature
that also requires improvement is in the area of disseminating information on the
activities of the legislature. A lot of people are still not enlightened on how
the legislature works. Only a system that is properly known, can receive
adequate criticism and moderation; enough to put the growth and development of
the legislature (in this instance) at par with other arms of government, having
been missing for a long period in Nigeria.
Further reading:
1.
Ameh J. (2015), Punch Newspaper, April 6th.
http://www.punchng.com/news/
2.
Lewis, P. (June, 2011) NIGERIA COUNTRY REPORT.
Johns Hopkins University. School of Advanced International Studies.
3.
Oko O. (2014) Legislators in Changing and
Challenging Times, An Analysis of the
Nigerian National Assembly. Goldline and Jacobs Publishing, New Jersey,
USA.
[1] Oko O. 2014 Legislators in Changing and
Challenging Times, An Analysis of the
Nigerian National Assembly Pg79.
[2] Punch Newspaper online. Assessed on the
21st of April 2015
[3]
Peter M. Lewis in his Nigeria
Country Report June 2011
[4]
Wikipedia online assessed on
Wednesday 13th April 2015
[5] Akinwumi Rotimi Old, New Senators Battle Over
Ranking Rule. Article
in the Daily Independent Newspapers, April 14th 2015.
[6] Standing Orders of the House of
Representatives, Eight Ed. Pg 3
[7] Wikipedia op. cit.
