Legislative effectiveness in Nigeria’s National Assembly: an institutional assessment approach

Abstract

Over the years, legislative scholars have designed different approaches, indicators, benchmarks and assessment toolkits for evaluating the legislature. These range from self-assessment guide to minimum criteria for legislative performance. However, the applications of these assessment toolkits seem difficult in evaluating the Nigerian legislature. It is against this backdrop that this paper employed a modification and domestication of Volden and Wiseman’s LES model to come up with a measuring toolkit: ILES Model suitable for comparative evaluation of the Nigerian legislature using institutional approach. The ILES model was used to evaluate the National Assembly over three Assemblies and the findings show that the Nigerian legislature was ineffective during the 4th Assembly and fairly effective during the 5th and 6th Assemblies. Based on the volume of Bills processed, the paper concludes that the National Assembly has a high prospect to perform better, thus recommended, among others, a robust capacity building for lawmakers especially on how to push Bills through the legislative cycle to become laws that will impact positively on the people.