PROMOTING EFFICIENCY IN GOVERNANCE THROUGH THE USE OF LEGISLATIVE INSTRUMENTS
by
Mojeed Olujinmi A. Alabi
Professor of Comparative Constitutionalism
Provost, College of Law (Ifetedo Campus)
Osun State University, Nigeria
Being the 6th Annual Service Lecture of Moses Inaolaji Aboaba Trust Foundation (MIATF) held in Osogbo on Friday, 3rd February 2024
Efficiency in Governance: By Who and for Who?
The concept of efficiency is often used in the economic sense to mean using the least resources to achieve maximum objectives, with a view to enhancing productivity. In Naira and Kobo, it means achieving the objectives of any policy choices using the least or minimum resources. This is often easy to calculate in private business. Talking of government, however, it becomes necessary to determine what is efficient in the light of government social responsibilities which often are difficulty to gauge in concrete statistical figures. The problematic of calculating achievement in terms of Naira and Kobo comes to the fore particularly in relation to the role of the legislature (the more numerous branch) in government. For, if using the least resources to achieve maximum objectives in the economic sense were to be the main goal of the society, then we should probably seek a monarchy, with only a single head and a few assistants managing the affairs of the society while using the meanest of means. The issue becomes more critical vis-à-vis the role of the legislature in public sector management in a presidential system like Nigeria where, in line with the principle of separation of powers and the corollary idea of checks and balances, the members of the legislature and the paraphernalia of legislative governance have to be completely separated from those of the executive, thereby wittingly or unwittingly increasing the cost of governance and challenging us to wonder if the society is having the right value in Naira and Kobo. Unfortunately, not many modern protagonists of the idea of separation of power have paid attention to the seeming disproportionality between the ideas of separation of powers of the one hand and the idea of efficiency in government on the other hand. For Baron de Montesquieu, who is generally believed to be the intellectual fountainhead of the idea of separation of powers, the attainment of efficiency in government is not the justification for power separation; rather, he propounded that “powers must not be concentrated in a single individual or body” only “to prevent arbitrary rule”. The essence of the theory therefore, as I postulated elsewhere, is “to guide against arbitrary rule and not necessarily for the attainment of efficiency in government”!
I raise the issue the economic correlates and social dimensions of the idea of efficiency because the cost of governance has become a major concern since the advent of the current democratic dispensation in an era of dwindling economic fortunes occasioned by falling oil revenue, excessive consumption patterns with high propensity for foreign goods with consequential deleterious impact on our foreign reserves, massive corruption at all level of public and private life, and unbridled race for political power attended by violence, brigandage and wanton display of ill-gotten wealth in the guise of stomach infrastructure. And, ironically under a democratic system, the hammer of public opprobrium has fallen on the legislature, as not a few Nigerians have wondered whether the National Assembly and its state counterparts, the State Houses of Assembly, jointly constituting the legislature in Nigeria, have been of any relevance to the socioeconomic development of the country. While some called for a scrap of the institutions, others advocated significant reduction in the cost of maintaining this “symbol of democracy” with prescriptions as outlandish as reverting to a single-chamber legislature at the federal level by scrapping the Senate or the House of Representatives, reducing the number of representatives per state in the upper chamber, making the tenure of members part-time, and generally, significantly reducing the emoluments of the legislators, all targeted at reducing the cost of governance in an era of dwindling (oil) public revenue, with a view to increasing efficiency in government operations and making democratic governance affordable on a sustainable basis. The current inflation and mass unemployment of a growing youth population further put pressure on a reform of our governance system in general, and on the legislative structure and processes in particular.
We must not make the mistake, however, that the case against a 2nd chamber is peculiarly Nigerian or limited to the developing democracies only. Even in Great Britain, the relevance of the House of Lords has come under constant public scrutiny over the ages. While the judicial function of the House of Lords have been resolved against the institution with the creation, under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, of a Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to take over the role of the apex court hitherto performed by the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, calls for withdrawal of its legislative function is no less under threat as the idea of a “radical plan” to “abolish the House of Lords” has been mooted. The truth is that overloaded Nigerian governance structure cannot be corrected by restructuring the legislature alone. The need to ensure efficiency in the management of our resources in times of plenty or adversity has been a major concern since we became self-governing in 1960. However, the centralisation of the civil service attendant to military incursion into politics necessarily compromised the sound recruitment process of the past, and since the mass purge of the civil service in the mid-1970s, introduced primordial and later kleptomaniac considerations that eventually compromised the core virtues of the colonial inherited civil service traditions of the pre-independence era. Not even the bold attempt at the onset of the current democratic dispensation could salvage the situation as the prescriptions of the Oronsaiye panel to downsize or rightsize the public service became moribund. Accordingly, to single out the legislature for reform towards ensuring efficient utilisation of our resources for sound public service management could only be analogous to scratching the surface of an endemic problem or treating the symptoms of a disease rather than tackling the root causes of our current public service debacle. Nonetheless, as the theme of today’s parley challenges us to do, directing attention to the legislature could be a starting, and just a starting, point of our desire for efficient public sector management in Nigeria. This is because efficiency in the use of legislative instruments is expected to assist in enhancing the business of governance.
The Legislature in Governance
Although not a perennial feature of history, being a later successor to royal absolutism which held sway in Europe and other parts of the world for centuries, Parliament, a more commonly used synonym for an assembly of representatives of the people which the modern legislature represents, have become the cornerstone of modern democracy, whether Western or otherwise. The importance of these representative institutions, of whatever variety and status, for the furtherance of democracy, whether in the developed or the developing world, cannot be overemphasised. In democracies, the legislature, being assemblage of the accredited representatives of the people, with membership often 100% elective, claims to exercise its power on behalf of the people. Although its development post-dated the fall of absolutism in Europe and elsewhere, the legislature has grown in power and significance in the last couple of centuries to become the leading institution that clearly separates democracy from other forms of government. In reality, the belief persists that there could be no democracy properly so-called without some form of assemblage of representatives of the people to exercise the power of the people on their behalf since it has practically become impossible for the people themselves to exercise such power in a manner reminiscent of the popular democracy of the Greek city states or of the acephalous egalitarian governance model of the Igbo native administration in pre-colonial Nigeria. Even under the communist regimes of the old Union of Soviet Socialist republics (USSR), China and the East European countries with ideological positions that were at variance with the Western notion of liberal democracy, some form of representation existed and still exists.
In the African context, the importance of the legislature is underscored by the fact that the institution is often the first casualty of any unconstitutional change of government. For instance, every military takeover of the government in Nigeria (1966, 1983 and 1993) had led to the dissolution of the national and state assemblies among other democratic institutions. While the other arms of government were permitted to exist and indeed blossom, albeit in their adulterated forms, the legislature was totally abrogated, or, to use the technical term that the CPA, IPU and other inter-parliamentary institutions are wont to use, “put in abeyance” under such regimes. Similar patterns were witnessed in other parts of Africa and the developing world under dictatorial rule of the military or other unconstitutional regimes, including the personalised one-party “democracies” that held sway in various parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America and other parts of the developing world, stemmed a bit by the collapse of communist internationalism and the Third Wave of Democracy (SP Huntington) by the last decades of the Twentieth Century.
Generally, legislative institutions were latecomers to the structure of government, and consequently they suffered stulted growth from inception. Even in Great Britain, the ascendancy of Parliament took centuries of struggles for power among the Estates of the realm, and it took the Glorious Revolution 1688 and the passage of the Petition of Right 1628 and the Bill of Rights 1689 for royal absolutism to be effectively checkmated, thereby paving the way ascendancy of Parliament, further consolidated as a popular assembly by the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949. Thus, whether in the developed or the developing world, the legislature has always been in the eye of the storm in discussions about governance and politics in general. In the “Other World” (Weatherby), Nigeria inclusive, the fact that the legislatures remain the major casualty of dictatorial and other unconstitutional change of power has had deleterious impact on their growth and development, reducing them to something of a junior partner in the business of governance, even under democratic rule, as they struggle for relevance under the uncontrollable weigh of executive power. They are thus confronted with a number of challenges, some endogenous by virtue of the nature of the parliamentary institutions themselves and others being products of ecological factors of the socio-economic, cultural and political environment that tend to obscure their role in the governance system, with wide perceptions, wrongly held no doubt, by the general mass of the people that parliament has little or no role to play in national development and hence unnecessary drains on the resources of any country.
Yet, the legislature and legislators do have more important role to play in national developments than it is generally acknowledged. Whatever be the status enjoyed by parliaments and parliamentarians in any political system, the existence of the legislature confers legitimacy on the exercise of power, since, for democracy, power belongs to the people. Even in the pre-colonial African and other political systems where elective representation of the type popular in modern democracies were not common, some form of representation existed in the palace chiefs being regarded as accredited representatives of the communities they represented. Such rudimentary form of representation also existed in Britain, France, Germany and other European enclaves where summons were issued by monarchies to landowners for the purpose of raising taxes to prosecute wars and for other needs, which eventually crystallised into the modern day parliaments. In Nigeria, the legislative institution has a history of more than a hundred years since the establishment of the first of its kind under the Clifford Constitution of 1922. Although the vicissitudes of its rise and fall is not a subject of our discussions today, it has nonetheless grown to become one of the leading institutions of governance, particularly since the advent of the current uninterrupted democratic regime of 24 years.
The Legislative Power
Whatever be the nature, status, structure or composition of parliamentary institutions, they play important role in national development in a variety of ways, broadly classified into three as Representation, Law Making, and Oversight of the other arms and institutions of government.
Although often largely subordinated to the other functions, the most important function of a legislative assembly, the one that forms the bedrock of the institutional relevance of the legislature in all climes and times, is that of representation. In fact, for John Stuart Mill in Representative Government (1861), there could be no other function of the British Parliament than its role as the “congress of opinions” of the British people although the consummate parliamentarian himself was constrained to question the extent to which the parliament might be allowed to have the last word on matters of policy when he asked the rhetorical question “Quis Custodiate Custode?” The representative function of the parliament provides the needed connection between the rulers and the ruled and gives the mass of the people a sense of involvement in policy conception, choice and implementation. In essence, through their deliberative functions, parliamentarian serve as a bridge, an important one no doubt, between the government and the generality of the populace, drawing attention of the government to the needs and expectations of the masses on the one hand and conveying the import of governmental policies and actions to the people on the other hand. Such a role is often overlooked but no doubt important as a disconnect between the rulers and the ruled may lead to mistrusts with the consequential impact on system stability and persistence. Of course, this deliberative function does play dysfunctional role too, particularly where the needed legislative-executive collaboration for national development is grossly lacking, or where, for reasons of undue partisanship, parliamentarians are unable to rise beyond primordial considerations in times of need for national consensus of matters of importance to the generality. It is in this dysfunctional role that parliament may become a factor for inefficient and/or ineffective operation of government business.
The second important role of parliament, the one that seems to have taken over as the real face of the institution, by which its performance is often gauged in the public sphere, at least among the mass of the people, is its role as a law-making body. As the law-making organ of government, parliamentarians have significant role to play in giving legal backing to policies, programmes and actions of government. The power of the legislature in this regard is extensive and covers the exercise of virtually all the powers of government as the national constitution (the grundnorm) may permit. For instance, the British Parliament is supreme in its law-making authority, which, according to Allen and Thompson, also means that the legislative powers of parliament are unlimited in the sense that it can legislate on any matters whatsoever; and that and no Acts of the Parliament may be reviewed for whatever reasons, save to some limited exceptions permitted by the British accession to the European Union (before Brexit). In the United States, “all legislative powers herein granted” are vested in the US Congress while all other powers are reserved for the states, being the component units of the US federation. In Nigeria, the legislative powers are specifically vested in the National Assembly and the State Houses of Assembly with considerable limitations that subject them to the whim of constitutional Supremacy (section 1), judicial review (section 6(6)(1))), prohibition of ouster clauses (s4(8)), and constitutionally prescribed procedure for the exercise of legislative powers (ss 8, 9, 58, 100).
Lastly, the most extensive and significantly important in the governing of (wo)men, is the oversight functions of the legislature are intended which are expected promote efficient, effective and transparent organisation of government business. The oversight functions are performed in plenary, through committees, motions, debates, petitions, questions, investigations, etc.
Generally, the legislature plays important role in mobilising resources for national growth and development. As the guardian of the purse, the legislature not only appropriate funds for policies and programmes and for the smooth running of governmental apparatus, it also helps to bring sanity to the business of governance. Parliament is the custodian of national finances, and through its power of appropriation, oversight, audit and investigations, it seeks to ensure openness, transparency and accountability in the use of public economic and other resources. This is particularly important for many African countries which depend on foreign aids for development, whether bilateral or multi-lateral. In this regard, the role of parliament is central in providing evidence of domestic accountability that could help strengthen bilateral or multilateral grants for national development. Generally, donors expect inclusive participation in the policy process, legislative backing for government policies, robust oversight of governmental policies and actions, curbing corruption, and general parliamentary guarantee of transparency, openness and accountability in procurement and other governmental activities. Broadly speaking, the existence of the legislative institutions gives a polity a sense of openness that guarantees societal stability under the rule of law.
Instruments of Legislative Governance
One question that may task our brains, in the light of the subject matter of today’s discussions is by what modes do the legislatures perform their onerous functions and how have or can these help in promoting efficient utilisation of public resources for good governance? What are the challenges facing the legislature and legislators, and what are the prescriptions for better performance, in these regards?
The exercise of the powers of the legislature is as important as the powers themselves, and legislative businesses are carried out under certain basic rules of procedure intended to facilitate the due discharge of the legislative duty in the promotion of good governance. Thus, in the performance of their legislative duties as governance institutions, legislatures and legislators do adopt a variety of “instruments to carry out their day-to-day activities, each and all of which are expected to contribute in different ways to efficiency in the utilisation of human and material resources in the public sector. These “instruments” goes beyond those that are more technically but narrowly referred to in legal parlance as “legislative instruments” in the sense of those legally binding outputs of the legislative process designated as laws, which contain “legal rules that affect lives and businesses”, as made by Parliaments, whether by themselves in the form of Acts (when made by national parliaments) or Laws (when made by subnational Parliaments), or by other bodies and agencies to which the powers of the Parliaments are specifically delegated (delegated/subordinate legislations) under the authority of Parliaments as stated in the enabling legislations, subject to the Act under which it is made. These enactments do provide enabling legal framework for governmental actions, programmes and policies.
In modern democracies, what I called “instruments of legislative governance” are broadly conceived and are derived from a variety of sources including the Constitution, specific Acts of Parliaments such as the Legislative Houses (Powers and Privileges Act) and the Laws (Authentication) Act that specifically relate to the modalities for the exercise of legislative powers, and the rules of practice and procedures that have become customarily crystallised into the Standing Orders and Rules, mainly as inherited from our colonial traditions. Thus conceived, the instruments of legislative governance do extend beyond the “legally binding rules” to include such “modes of exercising legislative powers” as bills, motions/resolutions, hearings, investigations, committee system, oversight visits, and constituency relations activities but excluding such interventions that are at variance with the nature of the legislative functions as the nebulously defined concept of “constituency projects”. It is by these instruments that the legislatures do control other organs and institutions of government, and which, if proper used, are expected to contribute significantly to efficient and effective public sector governance.
Power to (Un)Make Law
By virtue of central position that it occupies under the presidential cconstitutions (1979, 1989, 1995 draft and 19999), the Nigerian legislature wields enormous powers: No law could be made, altered or abrogated without the consent of Parliament. Laws, which may be expressed in such technical language as Acts, Laws, Ordinances, Proclamations, Decrees or Edicts are collectively the most visible and arguably the most important of the legislative instruments of anywhere in the world. For the generally of the people, the primary functions of the legislature is to make laws. That power is unique to the legislature and cannot be performed by any other organ or institutions, although the scope or extent of its usage may vary from one political system to another. However, while the power of law making resides in the legislature, its exercise is shared with other organs. Accordingly, the power of legislature in Nigeria, in Nigeria as elsewhere, is not absolute. The various constitutions do have provisions intended to curb the exercise of these powers. For instance, the law-making process is not complete without the assent by the President/Governor who also possesses veto power on such bills subject to the overriding veto of the legislature under ss 100(5) or in the disbursement of funds duly appropriated by it.
By the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the power of the National Assembly and the State Houses of Assembly are exercised by bills passed by the Houses, which at the bicameral federal level may originate in either of the two chambers, the Senate or the House of Representatives (sections 58, 100) and assented to by the President/Governor. The Constitution also contains elaborate procedure for the exercise of the powers to make law, depending on whether such Bills are ordinary or money bills (ss 59, 101). Also the Standing Orders and Rules contain the details of the practices and procedures of passage of Law. It is important to follow such procedure, particularly when they have constitutional backing. Such constitutionally sanctioned procedure for exercise of legislative powers may cause constitutional crises if not properly used. For instance, default in the procedure for passage of the Appropriation Bill 1981 made the Supreme Court of Nigeria to declare the exercise null and void in the case of Attorney General of Bendel State and Attorney-General of the Federation and others.
Control over Public Funds
The power to make law is specially exercised when it relates to what is called money bills. The special procedure prescribed for the exercise of that power must be strictly followed, otherwise the outcome of the process may be nullified by the Court as happened by the nullification of the Revenue Allocation Act 1981 by the Supreme Court of Nigeria in the case of Attorney General of Bendel State v Attorney General of the Federation & others. However, the power to raise taxes and impose levies or to appropriate funds for the use of the government (ss. 80-87, 120-127) is not the only mode by which the legislature controls other apparatus of power. As ‘guardian of the treasury’ and ‘controller of the purse’, Parliament wields the enormous power of control over public funds, including the power to prescribe the emoluments of public office holders (ss.84,124) on the recommendations of the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission; to audit public accounts (ss 85, 125), confirm and secure the appointment of the Auditor-General (ss.86, 87,126, 127), and the power to conduct investigation into and to procure evidence on the finances and other activities of government (ss. 88,128).
Investigative Powers
The investigative power of the legislature is extensive, and includes the power to cause investigations into any matters within its legislative competence, examine the accounts and activities of government, procure evidence from whatever sources, and invite, summon or subpoena any person or authority to appear before it, appoint and/or delegate its power to a committee ( ); and even exercise quasi-judicial powers analogous to those of judicial officers (eg contempt) to maintain orders and decorum in their proceedings ( ).
But the legislature cannot exercise its investigative power in such a way as to usurp or prejudice the judicial powers vested in the courts of law pursuant to Section 6, 15 i.e. Tony Momoh v Senate (supra); Fawehinmi v Babangida (2003) LPELR 1255 (SC). This is the sub judice rule. Indeed, the investigative powers of the legislature are exercisable subject only to the following conditions: (a) to make law with respect to any matters within its legislative competence; (b) to correct any defects in the existing law; and (c) to expose corruption, inefficiency or waste in the execution or administration of law within its legislative competence.
It is important to stress that the investigative power of parliament is not akin to the general power of investigation or prosecution possessed by the executive (e.g., through the Police, EFCC, ICPC, etc.) or adjudicative powers of the courts. The power cannot also be used to prejudice the fundamental rights guaranteed under Chapter IV of the Constitution. These powers are exercisable only in furtherance of a legislative purpose of (un)making laws or exposing corruption, inefficiency and waste.
The powers of the legislature are exercised through the instruments of Bills, no doubt; but much more are done through other instruments. In the interpretation section, the Constitution expects the National Assembly to exercise its powers “by an Act of the National Assembly or by a resolution passed by both Houses” (2nd Schedule, Part 3). Some of these resolutions are expected to be binding while others may not be so binding, but are no less important as legislative instruments. In fact, the exercise of power by resolution is provided for under various sections of the Constitution relating to:
Ratification/Confirmation of Appointments
Globally, one instrument of legislative power, exercised by resolutions passed the House, is the power to ratify or confirm of appointments into certain executive offices. In Nigeria, these include those of Ministers/Commissioners, Ambassadors and others ((ss 146(3), 147(2), 154(1), 86, 191(3), 192(2), 198, 126(1), 231(1) & (2), 238(1), 250(1), 256(1), 261(1), 266(1), 271(1), 276(1) and 281(1)); heads of the judiciary at the federal and the state levels (s 292); and Chairmen/Members of certain executive bodies listed established under the Constitution or by law (ss 153, 197?198), such as the Independent National Electoral Commissioner (INEC), National Judicial Council (NJC), Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Related Offences Commission (ICPC), among others. And related to this is the power to approve the number of Special Advisers appointable by the President/State Governors (ss 151,196).
It is important to stress that the confirmatory power of Parliament is absolutely. It can only approve or reject a nomination. Also, neither the parliament nor the appointor (President or Governor) can be compelled, e.g. by mandamus, to make, approve or reject a particular nomination. Also, the legislature cannot censure any executive appointee by removal. The best it could do is to pressure the President/Governor to remove any such officer. Where it passes a resolution that such an officer be removed, the President/Governor is not bound to so at; but willful and persistent refusal by the President/Governor to comply with such resolutions may amount to “gross misconduct” that may provide the needed grounds for activation of the provisions of sections 143 and 188 for removal of the offending President/Governor.
Other Powers Exercisable by Resolutions
Resolutions constitute a bulk of the instruments by which legislative houses do perform their functions and exercise control over the other organs and institutions of government. The daily routine items on the Order Paper, such as Public Petitions (through which grievances are redressed ( ) and Matters of Urgent Public Importance, among others, do generate debates that often concluded by resolutions. Even the process of passage of Bills into Law, including to committal to committees and adjournment of the house, are opened and terminated at each stage by resolutions that are passed the required numbers of legislators present voting. Outsight the formal sitting of the house, otherwise known as plenary, decisions of legislative houses are taken by resolution, whether ordinary (requiring a simple majority vote). Even in committees, including the Committee of the Whole, decisions are taking by passage of resolutions. Indeed, most of the legislative interventions that flow from the exercise of the legislative power of representation (constituency relations) and of oversight of the activities of the government ultimately get attended to through the passage of resolutions.
While resolutions of the houses are generally thought to be advisory in nature, there are certain resolution that are expressed under the Constitution as mandatory in nature. Such resolutions have the force of the Constitution of the law and are legally binding. The constitution is replete with many such decisions expected to be binding when passed by the legislature, viz:
Alteration or amendment of the provisions of the Constitution (section 9);
Adjustment of the structure and composition of Nigeria or any part thereof through the provisions on creation of states and boundary adjustments (section 8);
Establishment of courts and prescription of their jurisdictions (section 6 (4));
Delimitation of electoral districts/constituencies and determination of certain questions relating to election petitions–ss74, 79, 115, 119;
Proclamation of a state of emergency by the President (section 305);
Raising/deployment of the armed forces for combat duty outside Nigeria requiring the concurrence of the National Assembly;
Ratification and domestication of treaties and other foreign agreements;
Extension of the tenure of office of the President/Governor or of a legislative assembly for impracticability to hold elections when the country is in a state of war (ss 105(3), 135(3) & 180(3));
Also, a legislature house possess the power and regulate its own procedure (ss ), in furtherance of which they have their own Standing orders and Rules that define in more details the modalities for exercise of their legislative powers
Innovation of Constituency Projects
While legislatures possess enormous power over and control other institutions, they are not permitted to exercise their powers in a manner that prejudice the exercise of the power of other organs, particularly the executive and the judiciary, in a presidential system as in operation in Nigeria. One such unlawful use of the legislative power, which is gradually acquiring the status of a permitted norm since the advent of the current Fourth Republic in Nigeria, deserves a brief mention as unsuited to be considered an instrument of the exercise of legislative power, before concluding this lecture. This arose out of the need to create some measure of relevance for legislators in an era of politics of “stomach infrastructure” through the innovative and ingenious practice constituency projects.
Constituency projects, in whatever guise and by whatever means, cannot be an instrument of legislative power for promotion of efficiency in government. Of course, constituency relations are a major activity of any in many democracies. Legislators are first and foremost representatives of their constituents and are therefore expected to put in place facilities for robust legislature-constituency engagement to perform this important function of serving as liaison between the constituents on the one hand and the parliament on the other. To this extent, they are expected to open constituency offices, mannered by paid staff. The representative function had grown since about 1832 in the UK while the idea of “two Congresses” (of law makers and of representatives) in the US underscored the importance of representation as equally deserving of legislators’ attention as their law-making role. It is in this same vein that legislatures give primacy to debates for the purpose of education and enlightenment, as these are used as forum for addressing the economic, social, and political issues of the day.
The Nigerian constitutional framework also envisions robust relationships between legislators and their constituents. But the Constitution is silent on constituency activities of legislators while available legislations and Standing Orders have scanty provisions on how members are expected to conduct their constituency relations activities. Legislative aides paid by government (5 per legislator at the federal) and several others remunerated by the legislators from their personal emoluments have no guidance as to the nature of their work and are therefore left to function at the whips of their respective appointors. Accordingly, constituency activities have been difficult to track, and legislators have had to resort to the use of another instrument to make themselves relevant at the local level.
The seemingly unorthodox practice of “constituency projects”, which was pioneered in Lagos State and later upscaled to the national level at the onset of the current democratic dispensation, and now practised widely across legislative houses in Nigeria, is not and cannot be an instrument of legislative governance. It distracts from the essence of the legislative duty and, under the presidential system especially, a violation of the constitutional provisions on separation of powers and a negation of the essence of the oversight function. As I argue elsewhere, legislators are ill-suited to implement projects; the best we can do is to facilitate projects to our respective constituencies by using our legislative instruments to aid the executive authority of government in this regard. Under the Constitution, a legislator must lose his seat if s/he subsequently becomes a member of the executive by appointment as a Minister/Commissioner/Special Adviser/Ambassador. Conversely, he must resign his/her executive position if s/he is subsequently sworn in as a legislator (as the recent example of my friend, Simon Bako Lalong, shows). In this regard, the President/Governor cannot purport to use a member of a parliament for execution of his executive powers. Indeed, if legislators are to execute projects, we would be taken back to ask the question of who will oversight the exercise of that power, or to ask J S Mill did, Quis Custodiet Custodes? (Who guards the guardian?).
Conclusion
I have sought in this paper to highlight the various instruments available to the legislature in the exercise of its legislative power, which, if properly used, can ease government business, or, to use the terminology of the organisers of this programme, promote efficiency in governance. However, several challenges do confront legislative houses, of whatever variety, size, composition and geographical location, that necessarily constrained them to be less efficient and effective than could ordinarily be expected in the discharge of their duties as governance institutions. And these have and could derive from a variety of sources or cause by a variety of factors, an interrogation of which is beyond the scope of my current beat. What is certain is that the challenges that attend efficient utilisation of legislative instruments for optimum performance of governments may present themselves in varying degrees depending on the state of development of countries or the level of their respective democratic experience. However, while a reform of the legislative institution may assist in deepening our democratic governance systems, we must look beyond the legislature and legislators. The promotion of efficiency in governance is, indeed, a duty of all, by all and for all.
T H A N K S !!!