THE ROLE OF THE LEGISLATURE IN DEVELOPMENT POLICIES IMPLEMENTATION IN NIGERIA

Author: Dr. Amieyeofori Valentine Felix, Ph.D

ABSTRACT

While Nigeria boasts as the most populous nation and the biggest economy in Africa in terms of nominal GDP, the Country lags behind some of its peers on the continent in development. The country has had five development plans since independence, without truly reaping the benefits of such projections. This paper, therefore, reviewed the reasons behind such failures and noted that the failures could be attributed to a lack of continuity in development planning from one government to another; a lack of political will by the incumbent government because of corruption across all sectors of the government and national life. Other factors identified by this paper for the repeated failure include the lack of a true sense of commitment and clear vision by the successive leadership. There is also the over-politicization of the entire process, by not tackling the core development issues in the country. Nigeria’s development plans are also too tailored along those of the developed economies rather than evolving a plan that is realistic and suitable to our environment. The paper also recognized other major constraints such as lack of financial capacity to implement these lofty ideas, the inadequacy of professional planners, indiscipline, and unnecessary partnership; poor and inadequate feasibility studies in planning; lack of accurate data; erratic and conflicting government policies which result in policy summersault and abandonment. There are also issues of lack of inter-ministerial and inter-disciplinary coordinating machinery, lack of proper project monitoring, lack of efficient public sector, and lack of proper public and private sector partnership. As a remedy to these repeated failures in development planning, the paper brought to the fore the constitutional roles of the legislatures as the bastion of any democracy, to stand up to their constitutional duties, in not only passing the bills, but also ensuring that they are signed into law, and also implemented to the benefit of the country.

Keywords: Democracy, Legislature, Development Plans, Government Policies, Public and Private Sector, Policy Summersault, Politicization.

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