Nigerian National Assembly’s Legislative Oversight, the Powers of Summons and Appointments’ Ratification

Abstract

The legislature as First Estate of the realm represents citizens and sovereignty. It makes the law, serve as checks on the activities of the executive (oversight) and represent the citizens in constituencies. The responsibility of the Parliaments is to guarantee that accountability and transparency of government activities are maintained in order to curb misuse of public funds, corruption, while effecting good practices. It also scrutinizes the nominees for top government positions by the executive arm while it ensures that the requests sent by the executive are properly examined in order to avoid inefficiency and non-performance. However, the paper relying on secondary research method and data gathering discover that limited political will by legislators, inadequate funds, deteriorating infrastructural facilities, pressure from the Executive, predominance of inexperience legislators in the art of lawmaking and the tendency to place a higher premium of personal and pecuniary interests at the expense of public interests are antithetical to the effective legislative power of summons and appointment ratification in the National Assembly. Therefore, the paper recommended that there is a need for legislators to shun mediocrity and rise above pecuniary, sectional and party interests in favour of the protection of democracy and its practices.