NIGERIA'S RUBBER STAMP LEGISLATURE AND CONTROVERSIAL LAW MAKING IN A PSEUDO-DEMOCRACY: TRYING NEW DEVICES TO STEM THE TIDE
NIGERIA'S RUBBER STAMP LEGISLATURE AND CONTROVERSIAL LAW MAKING IN A PSEUDO-DEMOCRACY: TRYING NEW DEVICES TO STEM THE TIDE
The Legislature plays very crucial roles in democratic regimes or constitutional democracies all over the world. Unarguably, the most significant and engaging of its responsibilities is law making. The process for law making is deceptively straight forward. It is uncomplicated, strictly speaking, but could be cumbersome and time consuming. This is rightly so because of the need to get it right and make statutes that will not only fulfill its objective, be fit for its purpose, but also stand the test of time.
This is important not the least because Statutes (except ones with specific target) are expected to apply without discrimination or respect to persons, either in substantive provisions or in its application.
One might also add that law making is an expensive process, especially in jurisdictions with bi-camera legislature. In the light of these, it will amount to unmitigated wastefulness to make a law that is intrinsically bad, fraught with errors, ill-motivated or that might be unenforceable or difficult to apply.
It is a saving grace that laws, whether bad in themselves, defective in content or text, or perhaps have become outdated, can be amended, replaced or re-enacted. The amendment option is therefore a soothing route.
However, if it could be gotten right from the start, so as to forestall the enactment of a bad or unworkable law, this is to be preferred.
Statutes are expected also to be sociological in conception and in principle. That is, to be mindful in all its ambit of the sociological template of the people to which it is meant to apply. This is why it is required that the legislature consider, properly gauge or measure the pulse of the society, the people or the class, to which the law is to apply. This is the wisdom behind exposing legislative proposals or Bills to the public or stakeholders at an early stage in the process of law making for necessary input and critical engagement as well as diligent, painstaking, honest and detailed collation of perspectives and reactions prior to making final drafts for passage and presentation for executive/presidential assent.
The process of law making in Nigeria seems queer, often leaving trails of controversies making one wonder how thoroughly the rules of the process were adhered to. In recent times, we have had controversies over CAMA, Police Act, Social Media Bill, Water Resources Bill, just to mention a few.
What can be done by the legislature to up their game? If we do not attribute these controversies to deliberate mischief on the part of the law makers, there should be some measures or strategies to improve on their current abysmal rating in law making in Nigeria.
Aside allowing sufficient public engagement with draft Bills with a view to collating properly articulated and well reasoned reactions, the Nigerian legislature can also adopt a system that is not uncommon as a legislative device in some other countries. One such device is a system whereby laws or statutes are made with prospective or future effects as opposed to the usual military style 'immediate effect' in our laws. In this instance, laws are enacted to come into effect, not immediately but, in a given number of years. This could be between two to five years. This device will enable laws to be given widest publicity and further debate, prepare the mind of the people to adjust to the reality of the new law, give room to put right or to create the right environment necessary for its application or put in place structural, administrative or institutional adjustment that will enhance chances of seamless take-off of the law. It can also allow existing rights or equities to be exhausted before the new legal regime takes effect.
Furthermore, this device can actually trigger important corrections to the law before it comes into effect. It is high time such a legislative device is adopted in Nigeria, in appropriate cases.
There is neither glory nor pride in a legislature or legislative process whose outcome is dead on arrival or is patently defective it causes more maladies than the ailments it addresses. That opens the house, its competence or motive into question.
Where ignorance of the law is not an excuse, shrouding law making process in secrecy or abusing extant legislative rules to deliberately push a hidden agenda is a shame to the legislative house and a disgrace to the nation. Such must be deemed as unforgivable anomaly in the year 2020.
The newly amended Police Act, for example, with its outrageous provisions, is an apology as a statute in a country that claims to be 60 years old.
That members of our legislative Houses in Nigeria, in the past and in the current dispensations, go on regular retreats abroad supposedly to update knowledge, improve on their legislative skills, acquire modern tools and aids in law making and align with international best practices in law making and yet repeatedly serve us hideous legislation, appears to justify all derogatory labels with which they have been called. They should rather rise up to the task, realise this is not a child's play and stop using their time in the coloured cushions as napping time.
AOA Yusuff, Department of Public Law, OAU, Ile-Ife.
(C) 30th September 2020.
The Legislature plays very crucial roles in democratic regimes or constitutional democracies all over the world. Unarguably, the most significant and engaging of its responsibilities is law making. The process for law making is deceptively straight forward. It is uncomplicated, strictly speaking, but could be cumbersome and time consuming. This is rightly so because of the need to get it right and make statutes that will not only fulfill its objective, be fit for its purpose, but also stand the test of time.
This is important not the least because Statutes (except ones with specific target) are expected to apply without discrimination or respect to persons, either in substantive provisions or in its application.
One might also add that law making is an expensive process, especially in jurisdictions with bi-camera legislature. In the light of these, it will amount to unmitigated wastefulness to make a law that is intrinsically bad, fraught with errors, ill-motivated or that might be unenforceable or difficult to apply.
It is a saving grace that laws, whether bad in themselves, defective in content or text, or perhaps have become outdated, can be amended, replaced or re-enacted. The amendment option is therefore a soothing route.
However, if it could be gotten right from the start, so as to forestall the enactment of a bad or unworkable law, this is to be preferred.
Statutes are expected also to be sociological in conception and in principle. That is, to be mindful in all its ambit of the sociological template of the people to which it is meant to apply. This is why it is required that the legislature consider, properly gauge or measure the pulse of the society, the people or the class, to which the law is to apply. This is the wisdom behind exposing legislative proposals or Bills to the public or stakeholders at an early stage in the process of law making for necessary input and critical engagement as well as diligent, painstaking, honest and detailed collation of perspectives and reactions prior to making final drafts for passage and presentation for executive/presidential assent.
The process of law making in Nigeria seems queer, often leaving trails of controversies making one wonder how thoroughly the rules of the process were adhered to. In recent times, we have had controversies over CAMA, Police Act, Social Media Bill, Water Resources Bill, just to mention a few.
What can be done by the legislature to up their game? If we do not attribute these controversies to deliberate mischief on the part of the law makers, there should be some measures or strategies to improve on their current abysmal rating in law making in Nigeria.
Aside allowing sufficient public engagement with draft Bills with a view to collating properly articulated and well reasoned reactions, the Nigerian legislature can also adopt a system that is not uncommon as a legislative device in some other countries. One such device is a system whereby laws or statutes are made with prospective or future effects as opposed to the usual military style 'immediate effect' in our laws. In this instance, laws are enacted to come into effect, not immediately but, in a given number of years. This could be between two to five years. This device will enable laws to be given widest publicity and further debate, prepare the mind of the people to adjust to the reality of the new law, give room to put right or to create the right environment necessary for its application or put in place structural, administrative or institutional adjustment that will enhance chances of seamless take-off of the law. It can also allow existing rights or equities to be exhausted before the new legal regime takes effect.
Furthermore, this device can actually trigger important corrections to the law before it comes into effect. It is high time such a legislative device is adopted in Nigeria, in appropriate cases.
There is neither glory nor pride in a legislature or legislative process whose outcome is dead on arrival or is patently defective it causes more maladies than the ailments it addresses. That opens the house, its competence or motive into question.
Where ignorance of the law is not an excuse, shrouding law making process in secrecy or abusing extant legislative rules to deliberately push a hidden agenda is a shame to the legislative house and a disgrace to the nation. Such must be deemed as unforgivable anomaly in the year 2020.
The newly amended Police Act, for example, with its outrageous provisions, is an apology as a statute in a country that claims to be 60 years old.
That members of our legislative Houses in Nigeria, in the past and in the current dispensations, go on regular retreats abroad supposedly to update knowledge, improve on their legislative skills, acquire modern tools and aids in law making and align with international best practices in law making and yet repeatedly serve us hideous legislation, appears to justify all derogatory labels with which they have been called. They should rather rise up to the task, realise this is not a child's play and stop using their time in the coloured cushions as napping time.
AOA Yusuff, Department of Public Law, OAU, Ile-Ife.
(C) 30th September 2020.
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