LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT AND INSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY IN NIGERIA: EVALUATING THE PERFORMANCE AND CHALLENGES OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

Abstract

This paper critically examines the functions and contemporary performance of the Nigerian legislature with particular attention to its oversight responsibilities within the framework of democratic governance. While the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999, as amended) empowers the legislature to act as a check on executive excesses through lawmaking, budgetary control, and investigative powers, empirical evidence suggests persistent dysfunction, institutional weaknesses, and ethical contradictions in the exercise of these roles. Drawing on legislative records, secondary data, and scholarly analyses, the study investigates how corruption, political interference, and prebendal practices have compromised the effectiveness of legislative oversight. It argues that rather than serving as an instrument of accountability, the legislature has often become complicit in the systemic corruption it is meant to combat thereby manifesting in practices such as budget padding, constituency project fraud, and rent-seeking within committee systems. The paper concludes that meaningful reform requires strengthening institutional independence, enhancing legislative ethics, promoting transparency, and fostering collaboration with civil society and adoption of comparative models such as Singapore’s committee system to restore credibility and democratic accountability to Nigeria’s National Assembly. By integrating political and philosophical analysis, the study reveals that Nigeria’s legislature embodies both the promise and peril of democratic governance, where institutional authority coexists with moral failure.