NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
OF NIGERIA
HISTORY
The law-making function is one of the essential pillars of any society. No human society survives in the total absence of laws. Whatever the social system, the conduct of affairs must be defined by certain basic rules. These rules must be made by someone or some group and executed or enforced by some group.
In a democratic environment, power belongs to the people who in turn elect those who are to carry out the task of law-making on their behalf. But in a despot and directly exercised by him or assigned to anyone of his choice. There are no clear lines demarcating the law-making function from the executive function. The two flow into each other and are often carried out by the same people. Therefore, the story of one inevitably leads to the other. Such is the case of law-making in Nigeria arising from its long history of military dictatorships. The story of the legislature is intertwined with that of the executive and evolves from the larger history of the Nigerian national itself. Nothing better captures this evolution than the process of constitutional engineering in Nigeria, for it is these supreme laws of the land that provide guidance for law-making. On the whole, these supreme laws or constitutions are products of the dynamic polity, itself a part of the political history of Nigeria. Therefore, it is within this context that the development of the legislature can be traced to the beginning of British colonization of what is now known as Nigeria. The first act in the formal colonization process was the annexation of Lagos in 1961
The National Assembly is the supreme law making body of the land.
The Constitution has vested in it the power to make laws for "the peace, order and good
governance of the Federation. It consist of two chambers i.e. Upper
(Senate) and Lower (House
of Representatives) chamber
The 6th National Assembly (2007 -2011) was inaugurated on the 5th June, 2007.
The Senate is the upper chamber of the National Assembly. Out of the 109 Senators of the Senate, 26 were re-elected while 83 were elected for the first time
The House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the National Assembly which is the supreme law making body of the land.
The House of Representatives is led by the Speaker, Deputy Speaker, Majority and Minority Leaders, Chief Whips and
Committee Chairmen. There are
360 Members in the House of Representation. 89 were re-elected into the 6th Assembly while 271 were elected for the first time.
At
the head of the colonial administrative set-up for the colony called
The Settlement Of Lagos was a Governor aided by a ten-man advisory
body. This advisory body later called the Legislative Council
commissioned in March 1862 was to be the forerunner of actual
law-making bodies in the country.
February 19, 1866, the Settlement Of Lagos came under the
jurisdiction of a new British Colonial sovereignty known as the West
African Settlement incorporating the territories of Gold Coast,
Lagos, Sierra Leone and the Gambia.
Barely one year later, Lagos and Gold Coast were severed from the
larger settlement and brought under the jurisdiction of The Gold
Coast Colony with its own executive and legislative council. In
1886, the colony was further broken down and Lagos became a separate
political unit with its own governor, legislative and administrative
council. By this time, the rest of Nigeria had come under colonial
rule with the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria administered from
Zungeru and Calabar serving as the capital of The Protectorate OF
Southern Nigerian. The year 1906 was the turning point in the
history of what is now the Nigerian state for its was in this year
that the colonial administration began the process of creating an
entity out of the disparate peoples of Northern and Southern
Nigeria. It unified the Colony of Lagos with the Southern
Protectorate and it became The Colony and
Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and the Lagos Legislative Council
was granted powers to make laws for the entire entity. But it was in
1914 that the unification process was complete. Sir F.J.D. Lugard
was appointed Governor of the Colony and Protectorate of Southern
Nigeria in 1912 and tasked with the assignment of effecting the
unification of the Colony and Protectorate of Southern and the
Protectorate of Northern Nigeria.
Two
years later, this task was accomplished with both colony and
protectorates merged into what became The Colony And Protectorate Of
Nigeria. Lord Lugard became the Governor and Commander-in-chief of
this emerging nation. The Lagos
Legislative Council continued to legislate for the Colony and
Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, while the Governor made laws for
the Northern Protectorate.
The
emerging nation was, therefore, a product of mergers but it mergers
with tenuous links, the reason being the non-existence of a common
forum for the elite of the Northern and Southern Protectorates. Kept
apart, the natural understanding and confidence-building that flows
from interaction would elude them for 32 years until 1946 when the
Richards Constitution made interaction possible for Southern and
Northern politicians.
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