Public Hearing and citizens Participation in Law Making in Nigeria: A Study of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Right and Legal Matters
Thesis
This study examined public hearing and citizens participation in law making in Nigeria with reference to the activities of the Senate committee on Judiciary, Human rights and Legal matters in the 8th National Assembly. This study achieved four specific objectives. Firstly, it examined the activities of the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Human Rights and Legal matters with respect to public hearing conducted between May 2015 and May 2019; Secondly, the study assessed the extent of citizens participation in the public hearings conducted by the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Human Rights and Legal matters in the period under review; it further examined the extent to which public inputs of those public hearings influence relevant legislation passed by the Assembly in the period under review; and lastly the study identified possible challenges that militated against effective participation of citizens in the public hearings organized by the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Human Rights and Legal matters in the period under review The study adopted a descriptive research design and the purposive and random sampling technique was used in the selection of respondents that provided the primary data through the use of questionnaires. The data collected was analyzed by the use of statistical tables and simple descriptive statistics such as percentage scores. The simple percentage was calculated for all the respondents. Pie charts, bar charts and histograms were also used to present the findings in a more vivid manner. The key findings revealed that involving the citizens through the instrumentality of public hearing is effective to ensuring sound policy decision of the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Human Rights and Legal matters. The findings also revealed the challenges facing the committee thereby mitigating effective citizens participations. These included corruption amongst legislators, inexperience of new legislators, internal conflict, citizens apathy due to mistrust of the legislators, non regular conduct of public hearing to bring the citizens abreast of government activities and decision, lack of civic education and public enlightenment programmes amongst other challenges. Another finding of the study was that some major deficiencies existed in the functions of the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Human Rights and Legal Matters as one of the 57 Standing Committees. The first was that they couldn’t checkmate the excesses of the executive arm of government through oversights. Also as provided in the standing rules of the Senate, they didn’t live up to expectation in consideration of legislation, petitions and memorials. The study recommended that legislative committees should use different media to promote civic education and public enlightenment so as to reduce citizens’ apathy and alienation. Another key recommendation was that the different standing committees in the senate should regularly conduct public hearing to enable citizens make inputs on important national issues that affect them. The study also recommended that committees should faithfully perform their oversight functions to in checkmating executive excesses. Finally, it was recommended that more attention should be given to training and retraining of the principal officers for improved performance and overall efficiency.